A new collaboration between College of Arts and Sciences faculty and USA Swimming uses science to give U.S. swimmers an edge at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
The genesis of the project came from a chance meeting of two avid swimmers, Richard McLaughlin, professor in the mathematics department, and Claudio Battaglini, professor of exercise physiology in the exercise and sports science department.
McLaughlin leads the Joint Fluids Lab in applied and computational mathematics, and his years of experience in fluid dynamics meshed perfectly with Battaglini’s background in exercise science. Battaglini is also a world-renowned swimming coach and is currently the sprint coach for the USA Junior National Team. They added Jim Mahaney, senior associate of computer science and director of the Applied Engineering Laboratory, to the team for his expertise in research engineering.
To study the mechanics of swimming, the team started with the hand. To create a more realistic hand model, Mahaney and Steven Tio, a computer science and math double major, visited the UNC swimming and diving team. They measured each swimmer’s left hand and then used that data to produce a 3D hand model that was the average hand size of a Carolina swimmer. They divide the model into three parts, allowing easy replacement of fingers or thumbs when testing different hand positions.
Based on this model, they used a resin-based printer to create a solid hand with a smooth waterproof surface. They immersed the model’s hand in a recirculating tank where water flows at the speed of an Olympic swimmer. Mahaney designed the system so that the observed forces match the conditions in the pool.
To visualize and track the flow of fluid around the hand, the team used particle imaging velocimetry. This technique inoculates liquid with tracer particles and captures their movement through pairs of digital images tracked by a camera system. The results will help determine the best hand positions for faster swimming.
Swimmers will then train to master these new techniques. But to train them, swimming coaches will need to know the exact positions of each athlete’s thumbs and fingers while they are swimming. The team is developing a lightweight glove that will record these positions in real time.
Computer science major Harper Callahan created a prototype system that uses flexion sensors in each finger joint to track their orientation. Further work by the library’s head of information and science, Lilly Nekervis, took Callahan’s original design and added it to a flexible wooden hand to prove the accuracy of the sensors. After testing, the sensors will be integrated into a glove for use by swimmers.
USA Swimming is also interested in improving performance in open water swimming. The United States has not won a medal in men’s or women’s marathon swimming since the sport was introduced for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The Joint Fluids Lab’s 120-meter-long wave tank can simulate open-sea conditions in a controlled, allowing research into the effects of waves, currents and even wind on swimmers.
With just milliseconds making the difference between a gold or silver medal, the goal is to give U.S. Olympic swimmers a competitive edge backed by hard science. Battaglini says current advances in swimming are based on stopwatch comparisons without experimental evidence to back them up. This research aims not only to unlock the science behind swimming, but also to serve as a springboard for opening up new areas of research in tracking human movements, both in and out of the pool.
Read more about this project to engineer swimmers for speed.