Factors Involved in Performance Enhancement for Elite Swimming Seminar

With the requirement to seek ever smaller gains in elite sport, modern engineering techniques typical to the aerospace, automotive and marine industries are being utilised. In October 2009, British Swimming and UK Sport initiated the SwimSIM project with the University of Southampton to increase swimming performance prior to the London 2012 Olympic Games. This project involves three PhD students, with each focusing on a specific area.

Joe Banks is working on CFD simulations in OpenFOAM to incorporate both the resistive and propulsive forces in swimming. This research is made up of two main areas, the passive (naked hull) resistance of a swimmer’s body and a blade element momentum approach to simulate the effect the arms have as a propulsor. Chris Phillips is developing bespoke musculoskeletal (MS) simulations of human swimming, focusing predominantly on underwater undulatory dolphin kick. An athlete’s kinematics are used to determine the associated fluid forces which are then applied to the MS model. Angus Webb is working on swimming race simulation to enable race time prediction. This involves investigation of resistance and propulsion during the individual phases of a swimming race. These are obtained through combining experimental measurement of force components with CFD predictions and human capabilities identified through MS modelling.

In addition to the PhD research a comprehensive testing program is underway with the World Class Performance team in British Swimming. This program involves both acquisition of data for research purposes and providing coaching information for athlete performance enhancement. In total over 40 elite athletes have been tested in 45 testing sessions, comprising over 600 measurement runs.