On the hydrodynamics of planktonic microcrustacean locomotion: Numerical simulations and experiments

We develop a sharp-interface immersed boundary method for carrying out highly resolved simulations of the flow induced by a self-propelled copepod and integrate the simulations with high-resolution experiments to elucidate some aspects of the hydrodynamics of copepod swimming. A realistic copepod-like body is constructed, which includes most important parts of the animal's anatomy: the antennules, legs, and tail. The kinematics of the individual body appendages during an escape maneuver are prescribed based on data obtained using cinematic digital holography. The self-propelled motion of the copepod induced by the prescribed kinematics is simulated via a strongly-coupled fluid-structure interaction approach. The computed flowfields are compared with experimental results and analyzed to elucidate the structure and dynamics of the coherent wake vortices and quantify the specific contribution of each appendage on the production of propulsive thrust.