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We aimed to develop a new method for evaluating the drag in front-crawl swimming at various velocities and at full stroke. In this study, we introduce the basic principle and apparatus for the new method, which estimates the drag in swimming using measured values of residual thrust (MRT). Furthermore, we applied the MRT to evaluate the active drag (Da) and compared it with the passive drag (Dp) measured for the same swimmers. Da was estimated in five-stages for velocities ranging from 1.0 to 1.4ms; Dp was measured at flow velocities ranging from 0.9 to 1.5ms at intervals of 0.1ms. The variability in the values of Da at MRT was also investigated for two swimmers. According to the results, Da (Da=32.3 v, N=30, R=0.90) was larger than Dp (Dp=23.5 v, N=42, R=0.89) and the variability in Da for the two swimmers was 6.5% and 3.0%. MRT can be used to evaluate Da at various velocities and is special in that it can be applied to various swimming styles. Therefore, the evaluation of drag in swimming using MRT is expected to play a role in establishing the fundamental data for swimming.

The purpose of this study is to develop a swimming human simulation model considering rigid body dynamics and unsteady fluid force for the whole body, which will be utilized to analyze various dynamical problems in human swimming. First, the modeling methods and their formulations for the human body and the fluid force are respectively described. Second, experiments to identify the coefficients of the normal drag and the added mass are conducted by use of an experimental setup, in which a limb model rotates in the water, and its rotating angle and the bending moment at the root are measured. As the result of the identification, the present model for the fluid force was found to have satisfactory performance in order to represent the unsteady fluctuations of the experimental data, although it has 10% error. Third, a simulation for the gliding position is conducted in order to identify the tangential drag coefficient. Finally, a simulation example of standard six beat front crawl swimming is shown. The swimming speed of the simulation became a reasonable value, indicating the validity of the present simulation model, although it is 7.5% lower than the actual swimming.

The objectives of this study were to investigate the effect of trunk undulation on the swimming performance in underwater dolphin kick, and to clarify the ideal trunk undulation form. The reference swimming motion of an elite swimmer was firstly acquired from the video analysis, and input into the swimming human simulation model SWUM, which had been developed by the authors. The trunk motion was next optimized by the simulation for three objective functions: maximizing swimming speed, maximizing propulsive efficiency, and minimizing fluid force acting on hands. The following findings were obtained: In the case of maximizing swimming speed, the whole body forms a 'C' shape due to the in-phase trunk undulation. The swimming motion of maximizing propulsive efficiency and the reference swimming are considerably similar to each other. In both cases, the trunk moves as a seesaw with a node; whereas, the lower limbs form a traveling wave in the absolute space. The values of propulsive efficiency are around 0.2 in the cases of maximizing propulsive efficiency, minimizing fluid force on hands, and the reference swimming. The swimming motion in the case of minimizing fluid force on hands is almost the same as that of maximizing propulsive efficiency. The trunk undulation with the appropriate amplitudes and phases, especially bending at the chest, is important in realizing the swimming motion which maximizes propulsive efficiency.

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