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Applied Math Seminar
Locomotion by Destabilizing Symmetries
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Recent experiments in the Courant Institute Applied Math Lab and elsewhere have shown fascinating and subtle interactions between fluids and bodies moving through them, and have suggested that fluidic response to body motions can change dramatically with the "forcing Reynolds number", and can result in body locomotion. I will discuss the rich dynamics possible from an oscillated simple body that interacts with a surrounding viscous fluid. We show that nontrivial dynamics results from a classical symmetry breaking instability of body/flow interaction, yielding new periodic, quasi-periodic, and apparently chaotic dynamical states. We show further that in broad parameter regimes, unidirectional coherent locomotion of the body emerges as an attracting state of the system. I will also discuss very recent work on the related problem of a flying carpet. |