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First published online May 1, 2009
Journal of Experimental Biology 212, 1494-1505 (2009)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2009
doi: 10.1242/jeb.026732

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Using computational fluid dynamics to calculate the stimulus to the lateral line of a fish in still water

Mark A. Rapo¹, Houshuo Jiang^1,*, Mark A. Grosenbaugh¹ and Sheryl Coombs²

¹ Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
² Department of Biological Sciences and J. P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43402, USA

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: hsjiang{at}whoi.edu)

Accepted 29 December 2008

This paper presents the first computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of viscous flow due to a small sphere vibrating near a fish, a configuration that is frequently used for experiments on dipole source localization by the lateral line. Both two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) meshes were constructed, reproducing a previously published account of a mottled sculpin approaching an artificial prey. Both the fish-body geometry and the sphere vibration were explicitly included in the simulations. For comparison purposes, calculations using potential flow theory (PFT) of a 3-D dipole without a fish body being present were also performed. Comparisons between the 2-D and 3-D CFD simulations showed that the 2-D calculations did not accurately represent the 3-D flow and therefore did not produce realistic results. The 3-D CFD simulations showed that the presence of the fish body perturbed the dipole source pressure field near the fish body, an effect that was obviously absent in the PFT calculations of the dipole alone. In spite of this discrepancy, the pressure-gradient patterns to the lateral line system calculated from 3-D CFD simulations and PFT were similar. Conversely, the velocity field, which acted on the superficial neuromasts (SNs), was altered by the oscillatory boundary layer that formed at the fish's skin due to the flow produced by the vibrating sphere (accounted for in CFD but not PFT). An analytical solution of an oscillatory boundary layer above a flat plate, which was validated with CFD, was used to represent the flow near the fish's skin and to calculate the detection thresholds of the SNs in terms of flow velocity and strain rate. These calculations show that the boundary layer effects can be important, especially when the height of the cupula is less than the oscillatory boundary layer's Stokes viscous length scale.

Key words: computational fluid dynamics, fish, lateral line system, dipole source, oscillatory boundary layer

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