Swimming drafting simulation using a k − ω turbulence model

It is now well known that swimming drafting leads to a reduction in energy spent to overcome drag forces (friction, wave and pressure) and enhances gains time in competitive swimming (Chatard et al. 1998; Vennell et al 2006; Bixler et al. 2007; Brisswalter and Hausswirth 2008). In underwater swimming, the flow past a swimmer induces a trailing adverse pressure gradient area in its near wake. Swimming drafting behind and close to another swimmer consequently leads to a reduction in pressure drag induced by the lead swimmer. To our knowledge, the only study in literature dealing with numerical analysis of drafting in swimming is the one of Silva et al. (2008) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in two-dimensional (2D) configuration and where the distance between swimmers varied in the range 0.5 , d , 8.0m. This study differs from this work as far as it focuses on a shorter distance between swimmers (0 ,d , 0.5m) in touch with the experimental conclusions by Chatard and Wilson (2003).