Computational analysis of hydrodynamic interactions in a high-density fish school

Abstract

Numerical simulations are employed to study hydrodynamic interactions between two-dimensional fish-like bodies under a traveling wavy lateral motion in high-density diamond-shaped fish schools. This study focuses on two different streamwise spacings, a dense school with 0.4 body length (BL) spacing and a sparse school with 2.0 BL spacing, respectively. An immersed-boundary-method-based incompressible Navier–Strokes flow solver is then employed to quantitatively simulate the resulting flow patterns and associated propulsive performance of the schools. The results suggest that a fish in the dense school achieves higher thrust production and higher propulsive efficiency than that in the sparse school due to a strong wall effect from neighboring fishes. In addition, results from changing the lateral spacing in the dense school have shown that the wall effect is enhanced as the lateral spacing decreases. Flow analyses have shown that the wake pattern of the fish swimming diagonally behind the leading fish in a dense diamond-shaped school transfers from 2S to 2P when the lateral spacing is smaller than 0.6 BL. As a result, an angled jet is produced behind the school and brings more momentum downstream. At the same time, the appearance of the trailing fish results in a stronger pressure region behind the leading fish and leads to a higher hydrodynamic performance of the leading fish in the dense school. The insights revealed from this study will contribute to understanding physical mechanisms in fish schools and providing a new swimming strategy for bio-inspired underwater swarm robots.