Models and Control of Fish-Like Locomotion

Inspired by the advanced capabilities of fish-like swimmers, we seek a greater understanding of the hydrodynamic mechanisms they employ. Borrowing tools from geometric mechanics, we develop a large-amplitude gait design technique for self-propelling deformable swimmers in potential flow and Stokes flow. Additionally, a heuristically-developed control algorithm is implemented to nearly optimize thrust-generation for a swimmer moving through its own nearly-periodic vortex wake.