Thrust-versus-endurance trade-off optimization in swimming

ABSTRACT

This article applies methods typically used in engineering applications to the optimization of human locomotion, more specifically a swimmer's underwater ‘dolphin kick’. This is a dual-objective problem which seeks the optimal trade-off between thrust (simulated using Lighthill's fish propulsion method) and the force in the muscles to produce this thrust (simulated using musculoskeletal modelling). The expense of the analyses leads to the use of a surrogate modelling based optimization technique (multi-objective expected improvement using Kriging). The results indicate that optimal human motion does in many respects follow that of fish, with low frequency eel-like techniques suitable for endurance and a high frequency tuna-like kick for high thrust. The MATLAB® code, including thrust and muscle activity models, is made available in an online repository.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiobjective
• surrogate modelling
• Kriging
• dolphin kick
• musculoskeletal modelling

Acknowledgments

The authors thank British Swimming for their help with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the EPSRC [grant reference EP/H501568/1].