Fish Swimming: Patterns In The Mechanical Energy Generation, Transmission And Dissipation From Muscle Activation To Body Movement

The power consumption of the undulatory fish swimming is produced by active muscles. The mechanical energy generated by stimulated muscles is dissipated partly by the passive tissues of fish while it is being transmitted to the fluid medium. Furthermore, the effective energy, propelling fish movement, is a part of that delivered by the fish body. The process depends on the interactions of the active muscles, the passive tissues, and the water surrounding the fish body. In the previous works, the body-fluid interactions have been investigated widely, but it is rarely considered how the mechanical energy generates, transmits and dissipates in fish swimming. This paper addresses the regular patterns of energy transfer process from muscle activation to body movement for a cruising lamprey (LAMPREY), a kind of anguilliform swimmer. It is necessary to propose a global modelling of the kinematic chain, which is composed of active muscle force-moment model, fish-body dynamic model and hydrodynamic model in order. The present results show that there are traveling energy waves along the fish body from anterior to posterior, accompanied with energy storing and dissipating due to the viscoelastic property of internal tissues. This study is a preliminary research on the framework of kinematic chain coordination performance in fish swimming.