Swimming in a potential flow

These are animations of a three-link mechanism swimming in a potential flow due to shape changes. To generate these animations, we considered a massless three-link body submerged in an ideal, incompressible fluid and asked the question: "starting from rest, can the three-link propel itself in a potential flow by controlling its shape variables (i.e., relative angles) only?

E. Kanso

swim1.avi (61MB) swim2.avi (94MB)