The Applied Fluid Mechanics Lab specializes in studies of biological fluid flows using engineering approaches. Of particular interest are studies of locomotion, pumping and feeding functions in biological systems interacting with low-speed, unsteady fluid flows.
The objectives of our research are to:
Identify unifying physical design principles in biological systems interacting with low-speed unsteady flows for locomotion, pumping, and feeding functions, through characterizing structure-function relationships.
Use these physical principles to develop bio-inspired devices and flow control methods for engineering and biomedical applications.
Our approach includes experiments using robotic models and computational fluid dynamics simulations. Experiments are carried out in live organisms where possible and used to guide the design of the physical and computational models. Short descriptions of ongoing research projects are provided below. Please check out our research videos. Contact Dr. Santhanakrishnan if you are curious to learn more!