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Studying fish suction feeding using computational fluid dynamics

Mathematical Biology

Speaker: Tyler Skorczewski, UC Davis
Location: 2112 MSB
Start time: Mon, May 24 2010, 3:10PM

Suction feeding is one of the most common aquatic prey capture techniques used by fish and other aquatic predators. In a suction feeding event a rapid expansion of the mouth drives a fluid flow which draws the prey into the mouth. Understanding this fluid flow is essential for a complete understanding of suction feeding as the flow field is what a fish directly manipulates to capture prey. We use an overset grid scheme to perform computational fluid dynamics studies to explore how certain jaw morphologies affect the flow field and are selected for in nature.