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Optimal Snake Locomotion by Regulating Normal Force Distribution

Jafari Ozoumchelooei, Hassan | 2021

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: English
  3. Document No: 53624 (08)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Mechanical Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Alasty, Aria; Pendar, Hodjat
  7. Abstract:
  8. A lack of appendages makes snake motions simpler in some respects than those of other locomoting animals. Most of the researches done in this area has assumed that the normal force distribution of the snake is uniform along its length. But, observations of snake locomotion show that snakes tend to lift their body during movement, which means they dynamically change the distribution of normal force along their body. In this study, we addressed this issue and succeeded in formulating the snake’s normal force distribution systematically. This project has been conducted in two stages. In the first stage, we speculated uniform normal force distribution and verified our snake model by comparing our results with previous studies. The snake model equations of motion derived by using Newton’s law, then we discretized these equations and calculated the optimum way of locomotion through environments with different friction coefficients. In the second stage, we formulated the snake’s normal force based on our observation of a real snake locomotion behavior and applied it to the snake model in different friction coefficient sets for investigation. We managed to formulate normal force distribution for the "Sinus lifting (lateral undulation)" and "Sidewinding" type of locomotion. Our results showed enhancement in the locomotion efficiency, hence it demonstrated which type of normal force distribution would lead to better performance regarding the friction coefficient set. More importantly, despite the fact that in the previous studies researchers couldn’t find an answer for the snake’s equations of motion or the resulted solution showed that the snake model has difficulty moving in an isotropic friction coefficient set when uniform normal force distribution applied to the model, we managed to solve this problem by regulating the distribution of normal force (adding the proposed normal force distribution function). At last, we compared the results of Sidewinding locomotion of the snake model with a real snake, which showed high degrees of compatibility
  9. Keywords:
  10. Optimization ; Friction ; Side Winding ; Sinus Lifting ; Snake Locomotion ; Normal Force Distribution

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