Active Chemical Sampling Using Jet Discharge Inspired by Crayfish: CFD Simulations of the Flow Fields Generated by the Jet Discharge Device

Here, we report on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations conducted to develop a chemical sample collection device inspired by crayfish. The sensitivity of chemical sensors can be improved when used with a sniffing device. By collecting fluid samples from the surroundings, all solute species are also collected for the sensor. Crayfish generate jet-like water currents for this purpose. Compared to simply sucking water, food smells dissolved in the surrounding water can be more efficiently collected using the inflow induced by the jet discharge because of the smaller decay of the inflow velocity with the distance. Moreover, the angular range of water sample collection can be adjusted by changing the directions of the jet discharge. In our previous work, a chemical sample collection device that mimics the jet discharge of crayfish has been proposed. Here, we report CFD simulations of the flow fields generated by the device. By carefully configuring the simulation setups, we have obtained simulation results in which the angular ranges of the chemical sample collection in real experiments is well reproduced. Although there are still some discrepancies between the simulation and experimental results, such simulations will facilitate the process of designing such devices.