Drag Reduction of Filaments and Poroelastic Bodies by Non-Linear Deformation

Abstract

Because of their flexibility, trees and other plants deform with great amplitude (reconfigure) when subjected to fluid flow. Hence the drag they encounter does not grow with the square of the flow velocity as it would on a classical bluff body, but rather in a less pronounced way. The reconfiguration of actual plants has been studied abundantly in wind tunnels and hydraulic canals, and recently a theoretical understanding of reconfiguration has been brought by combining modelling and experimentation on simple systems such as filaments and flat plates. These simple systems have a significant difference with actual plants in the fact that they are not porous: fluid only flows around them, not through them. We present experimentation and modelling of the reconfiguration of a simple poroelastic system. Proper scaling of the drag and the fluid loading allows comparing the reconfiguration regimes of porous systems to those of simple systems. It is found that in the large reconfiguration regime, the scaling of the drag with flow velocity is independent of the porosity for a range of parameter values.