Beneath Our Feet: Strategies for Locomotion in Granular Media

• A.E. Hosoi ^[1] ; Daniel I. Goldman ^[2]
  1. [1] Massachusetts Institute of Technology

     Massachusetts Institute of Technology

     City of Cambridge, Estados Unidos

     
  2. [2] Georgia Institute of Technology

     Georgia Institute of Technology

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Annual review of fluid mechanics, ISSN 0066-4189, Nº. 47, 2015, págs. 431-453
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Although Denis Healey's famous adage (Metcalfe 2007) may offer sound advice for politicians, it is less relevant to worms, clams, and other higher organisms that rely on their digging ability for survival. In this article, we review recent work on the development of simple models that elucidate the fundamental principles underlying digging and burrowing strategies employed by biological systems. Four digging regimes are identified based on dimensionless digger size and the dimensionless inertial number. We select biological organisms to represent three of the four regimes: razor clams, sandfish, and nematodes. Models for all three diggers are derived and discussed, and analogies are drawn to low–Reynolds number swimmers.