VISCOELASTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF FINS, MUSCLE AND SKIN IN CRUCIAN CARP
(CARASSIUS AURATUS)
CHEN Ming, JIA Lai-Bing, YIN Xie-Zhen*
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

The video and pictures shows Time Resolved (TR) PIV results of mechanical properties of the body of a fish. The study was done to explore the source of high efficiency during fish swimming. Researchers investigated the viscoelastic properties of the fins, muscle and skin of Crucian carp (Carassius Auratus). Comparison of these results with the cruising frequency of Crucian carp shows that the dissipation due to internal viscoelasticity during cruising is small. Microvec PIV system was used for this research with a 1.5W CW semiconductor laser, Imperx 640 x 480 pixel camera with Epix frame grabber recoding at 170 frames per second.