• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.796-807
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• 2009

The swimming abilities of aquatic-animals are of vital importance to their ecology. The relationship between outer shapes and the swimming ability has been focused just a few centuries ago by engineering community. Present paper surveys the recent studies of the aquatic-animals' swimming performance in the morphological point of view. Also an experimental study is performed in order to investigate the effect of the tail fin's shape on the propulsive performance. The result showed that the morphological study provided valuable data for exploring the secrets of the aquatic-animals' swimming performance.