title: Refuging rainbow trout selectively exploit flows behind tandem cylinders.
abstract: Fishes may exploit environmental vortices to save in the cost of locomotion. Previous work has investigated fish refuging behind a single cylinder in current, a behavior termed the Kármán gait. However, current-swept habitats often contain aggregations of physical objects, and it is unclear how the complex hydrodynamics shed from multiple structures affect refuging in fish. To begin to address this, we investigated how the flow fields produced by two D-shaped cylinders arranged in tandem affect the ability of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) to Kármán gait. We altered the spacing of the two cylinders from l/D of 0.7 to 2.7 (where l=downstream spacing of cylinders and D=cylinder diameter) and recorded the kinematics of trout swimming behind the cylinders with high-speed video at Re=10,000-55,000. Digital particle image velocimetry showed that increasing l/D decreased the strength of the vortex street by an average of 53% and decreased the frequency that vortices were shed by ∼20% for all speeds. Trout were able to Kármán gait behind all cylinder treatments despite these differences in the downstream wake; however, they Kármán gaited over twice as often behind closely spaced cylinders (l/D=0.7, 1.1, and 1.5). Computational fluid dynamics simulations show that when cylinders are widely spaced, the upstream cylinder generates a vortex street that interacts destructively with the downstream cylinder, producing weaker, more widely spaced and less-organized vortices that discourage Kármán gaiting. These findings are poised to help predict when fish may seek refuge in natural habitats based on the position and arrangement of stationary objects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida, St Augustine, FL 32080, USA.
authors.forename: William J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Stewart
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2610, Australia.
authors.forename: Fang-Bao
authors.initials: FB
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida, St Augustine, FL 32080, USA.
authors.forename: Otar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Akanyeti
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida, St Augustine, FL 32080, USA.
authors.forename: Christina J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Walker
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida, St Augustine, FL 32080, USA jliao@whitney.ufl.edu.
authors.forename: James C
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0181-6995
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Liao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005684:Gait; D057446:Hydrodynamics; D008954:Models, Biological; D017686:Oncorhynchus mykiss / Q000502:physiology*; D010507:Periodicity; D014872:Water Movements
keywords: CFD; DPIV; Flow visualization; Kármán gait; Oncorhynchus mykiss; Swimming; Turbulence; Vortex street