Model swimmer pools knowledge

Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and the Australian Institute of Sport are using mathematics in a bid to speed up top swimmers by testing changes to swimming strokes.

The research will make use of the same software CSIRO uses for other fluid simulations such as animating water for movies and modelling volcanoes and tsunamis. Researchers are hoping to see some practical results in time to implement improvements for the London Olympics in 2012.

“Firstly we need to understand how water interacts with the human body during competitive swimming,” said CSIRO researcher Chris Glendenning.

“We are building a virtual model of a swimmer and are using mathematical techniques known as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics or SPH to run simulations of the virtual model swimming in a pool.

“In contrast to traditional methods, SPH describes fluid flow as the motion of individual particles. Using this technique means we will be able to more accurately simulate the interactions of water with a swimmer, which is particularly complex at the water’s surface.”