%0 Journal Article %A Kumar, M. Siva %A Philominathan, P. %D 2011 %I Begell House %N 6 %P 565-571 %R 10.1615/InterJFluidMechRes.v38.i6.90 %T Robo-Linked Purcell's Swimmer %U https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/71cb29ca5b40f8f8,6f481b230804413e,763d0d127e49f1b2.html %V 38 %X EM Purcell proposed three-linked swimmer 60 years ago as a hypothetical creature capable of swimming in highly viscous fluid. We have constructed a scaled model of this swimmer to investigate reciprocal and non-reciprocal swimming motion. The links were programmatically rotated by the interactive servomotors controlled by a microcomputer. Reciprocal motion of the links produced no net displacement illustrating the effect of scallop theorem. Experiments on non-reciprocal motion captured very important property suggested by theories: small stroke angles cause forward swimming and large stroke angles backward. We have measured non-dimensional displacement per cycle and compared with the theoretical predictions and found consistent. Surprisingly, in low-frequency region, flapping frequency of the links also play a role in determining swimming direction. The low-Reynolds number swimming is characterised by Stokes equation which is linear and time-independent. But frequency dependence in low-frequency region shows the breakdown of Stokes law with inertia. %8 2011-11-29