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Journal Articles Physical Review Letters Year : 2005

Heavy flags undergo spontaneous oscillations in flowing water

Abstract

By immersing a compliant yet self-supporting sheet into flowing water, we study a heavy, streamlined, and elastic body interacting with a fluid. We find that above a critical flow velocity a sheet aligned with the flow begins to flap with a Strouhal frequency consistent with animal locomotion. This transition is subcritical. Our results agree qualitatively with a simple fluid dynamical model that predicts linear instability at a critical flow speed. Both experiment and theory emphasize the importance of body inertia in overcoming the stabilizing effects of finite rigidity and fluid drag.
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Dates and versions

hal-00014594 , version 1 (07-09-2015)

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Michael Shelley, Nicolas Vandenberghe, Jun Zhang. Heavy flags undergo spontaneous oscillations in flowing water. Physical Review Letters, 2005, 94, pp.094302. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.094302⟩. ⟨hal-00014594⟩
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