Slow and steady vs fast and furious

Recent papers in Engineering Optimisation and Sports Engineering and Technology by lead author Dr Chris Phillips reported on work from his PhD studies investigating the energetics of underwater fly kick in swimming .

Bubble screen helping capture behaviour of fluid during flykick

It is an interesting question in performance swimming, especially in longer events, is for how long and with what intensity an underwater fly kick can be used? A more intense, mainly lower leg intense kick may well allow a faster speed but is it worth the energy cost compared to a more whole body wave motion ?

Image from dynamic motion capture showing key point locations and corresponding element positions

This work carried out by the performance sport engineering laboratory used a combination of kinematic measurements of a world class swimmer, an applied fluid dynamics code using Lighthill’s method and a state-of-the-art muscoskeletal analysis code to use the measured motion, coupled with estimates of fluid loading to evaluate the likely muscle activity required and hence energy cost of two approaches to underwater fly kick. Optimisation methods were used to generalise the approach from a specific swimmer to a more general result.

Anybody image of same poistion taht allows estimates of muscle group engagement

So how should swimmers trade-off their techniques during a race? Watching the best, especially as they proceed through heats to final clearly shows that they understand that the trade-off is there to be made. But what is clear to all is that having a great underwater fly kick techniques that allows a swimmer to access both methods is a powerful tool to deploy in competition.

Reducing ships fuel emissions via AI-driven voyage optimisation software

Despite the fact that shipping is such an efficient form of transport, it still accounts for ~2% of world emissions. With 50,000+ commercial vessels operating in our oceanā€™s there is plenty of room to improve the efficiency of these vessels to help our planet. This view is supported by shippingā€™s regulators and there is increasing legislative pressure to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. This increase in legislation is in combination with the increase in the cost of compliant fuels and has led to a high demand for solutions to reduce fuel-consumption of commercial vessels.

Therefore, Dr Adam Sobey and Dr Przemyslaw Grudniewski from the Maritime Engineering group at the University of Southampton have partnered with Theyr ltd to create an efficient voyage optimisation solution for commercial vessels. The project will focus on combining real-time high-fidelity met-ocean data, provided by Theyr ltd, with a world-leading Genetic Algorithm, developed previously by Dr Sobey and Dr Grudniewski. This will increase the robustness and effectiveness of voyage planning, allowing vessels to avoid poor weather and travel at efficient speeds to reduce greenhouse gases emissions.

The project is funded by a grant from the Ā£4.8 million SPRINT program (SPace Research and Innovation Network for Technology), which was developed to help merge commercial data and technologies with innovative university research.Ā  Furthermore, it is planned to utilise the IRDIS 5 supercomputer, the UKā€™s largest academic supercomputer located in University of Southampton, to accelerate the verification process. We hope a number of student projects will be developed in parallel to this research to help the team solve these challenging issues and provide creative solutions to provide real world impact.

Further details can be found in the trade and engineering press: FreightcommsSHIP Technology, Vessel Performance Optimisation and the May 2020 issue of the Naval Architect, published by the Royal Institute of Naval Architects.