On the scaling of drag reduction by reconfiguration in plants

Emmanuel de Langre (1) , Alvaro Gutierrez (1, 2) , Julia Cossé (1, 3)

1 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique
2 UPM - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
3 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology

Slender flexible structures such as plants are deformed by external flow. When the deformation is significant, this results in a reduction of drag. We give a theoretical value of the exponent that characterizes the drag law. This theoretical value is shown to compare well with experimental data on a very large variety of plants. It is found that reconfiguration affects more the local bending stress than the total drag. Moreover, a non-linearity in the bending law does not affect significantly the mechanism. © 2011 Académie des sciences.

Emmanuel de Langre, Alvaro Gutierrez, Julia Cossé. On the scaling of drag reduction by reconfiguration in plants. Comptes Rendus Mécanique, 2012, 340 (1-2), pp.35-40. ⟨10.1016/j.crme.2011.11.005⟩. ⟨hal-00994485⟩