Pulsating Soft Corals

Soft corals of the family Xeniidae have a pulsating motion, an active energetically expensive motion by a sessile organism. We are studying how this behavior may give these corals a competitive advantage, especially by allowing their symbiotic algae to photosynthesize to a greater extent. We will present a mathematical model and computational simulations of the pulsations of the coral and the resulting mixing due to this behavior. Direct numerical simulations of the pulsating corals and the resulting fluid flow by solving the Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the immersed boundary method will be discussed. We will present results of how the mixing created by the corals is modified as we vary parameters of the fluid flow and the pulsating motion. Furthermore, we will discuss the coupling of the fluid flow with a simplified photosynthesis model and resulting simulations.