Centre-of-mass and minimal speed limits of the great hammerhead.

ABSTRACT: The great hammerhead is denser than water, and hence relies on hydrodynamic lift to compensate for its lack of buoyancy, and on hydrodynamic moment to compensate for a possible misalignment between centres of mass and buoyancy. Because hydrodynamic forces scale with the swimming speed squared, whereas buoyancy and gravity are independent of it, there is a critical speed below which the shark cannot generate enough lift to counteract gravity, and there are anterior and posterior centre-of-mass limits beyond which the shark cannot generate enough pitching moment to counteract the buoyancy-gravity couple. The speed and centre-of-mass limits were found from numerous wind-tunnel experiments on a scaled model of the shark. In particular, it was shown that the margin between the anterior and post

SUBMITTER: Iosilevskii G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7657883 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature