FACULTY
EXCEPTIONAL RESEARCHERS
Our faculty members are out ahead of the pack, exploring topics and exploiting technologies
that will help shape the future for decades to come.
PROFESS OR
HILARY
BART-SMITH
LANDING A SECOND MURI
T
Associate Professor Hilary Bart-Smith is hoping to learn how trout (l), tuna (r)
and dolphins propel themselves through water, setting the stage for a new
generation of underwater vehicles.
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here is a reason that form follows function. Animals move
through a series of gaits to maximize energy efficiency
at different speeds. By comparison, human-made vehicles
are inflexible, confined to a single method of propulsion
regardless of speed. A car moves the same way at 6 miles an
hour as it does at 60.
That’s why Associate Professor Hilary Bart-Smith, a
mechanical engineer, is using nature as her inspiration
for developing new, high-performance methods to propel
underwater vehicles. This year, Bart-Smith secured her
second highly competitive Multidisciplinary University
Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Department of
Defense to expand on her pioneering investigation of aquatic
propulsion. The award totals $7.4 million over five years.
During her first MURI, Bart-Smith and her colleagues
studied batoid rays, which include manta rays and cownose
rays. Their work produced a better understanding of issues
that affect the rays’ movements through water, including
wake structure, structural dynamics and kinematics.
For the second MURI, Bart-Smith and her colleagues, who
include faculty members from Princeton, West Chester,
Harvard and Lehigh universities, as well as from the
University of Virginia, have chosen to study trout, tuna and
dolphins. These fast, efficient swimmers display similarities
and differences in their fin structure, mechanical properties
and swimming mechanisms that make them ideal for
further investigation. “We want to be able to make a
connection between per