Leo and Ralph are doing fine, they are in fact doing great! Both tortoises appear healthy and energetic. Also, we just changed the container that we used to keep them both.
One of them is inside the small purple container.
Anyway, in conjunction with the module's blog schedule, in this post we will see biomimetics studies that have been done by researchers that were inspired from turtles. One interesting study is the Design and Implementation of a Biomimetic Turtle Hydrofoil for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, by Davinia Font, Marcel Tresanchez, Cedric Siegentahler, Tomas Palleja, Merce Teixido, Cedric Pradalier and Jordi Palacin.
Basically, the study is about the design and implementation of a turtle hydrofoil for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). The most common AUV propulsion system is usually using propellers, however propellers are not suitable for some conditions, such as low flow conditions, in confined spaces, near the surface, and in unsteady flow. Hence, propulsion based on 'fins' are of great interest for maneuverability. The authors proposed turtle's propulsion methods.
An example of an AUV used by United States Navy.
Turtle's fins have a hydrofoil shape. The skeleton of the fin, which consists of thick humerus and radius, are short in length, while the phalanx is comparatively very long. These characteristics create a streamlined hydrofoil that is adapted to swim efficiently, as the resistance from the hydrofoil dynamic swirl is reduced. In addition to the fin's shape, the turtle's head has a pointy shape, able to reduce the forward resistance by adapting the position of its head relative to the navigation path. In other words, the head helps 'cut' through the water.
a) Oval path followed by the legs of a freshwater turtle.
b) Figure-of-eight path followed by the hydrofoils of a sea turtle.
They conducted three experiments to study the feasibility of the concept. They performed computer simulations as well as physical experiments to determine the optimum angle of attack, propulsion path of hydrofoil, and the profile of water speed generated by the displacement of hydrofoil.The study concluded that the design of AUV can be further improved when using this biomimetic inspiration, specifically from turtles.
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