The Next Technolgy Leap: Liquid Glass Surfaces

Thanks KD for putting that one up ...

While on the subject of next leap, why not look back to nature.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20040412020237data_trunc_sys.shtml

Dare I do this for my next rudder ???

aloha,
pog

#1 Tue, 02/02/2010 - 2:17pm

you know what's even crazier, they were testing flippers in a wind tunnel.

where's my old buddy who insisted scientists never test water born objects in wind tunnels? dammit.

#3 Tue, 02/02/2010 - 4:21pm

Even more than that can you make an exact replica of a fish to the scale of a canoe? That's where the money is.

#5 Tue, 02/02/2010 - 7:47pm

I did a quick search for the authors of the whale fin article and they've done a lot of work on understanding how the tubercles function. Several papers and conference proceedings in some decent journals. I haven't read any of the articles to see exactly what they're doing, but I'd believe there's a good reason for the bumps to be there. One thing nature is very good at is efficiency. For anyone interested here's a bunch of articles by the authors of the whale fin study:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Miklosovic+whale&hl=en&btnG=Search&a...

You should be able to view the abstract for most of the articles, some you might be able to see the full article but probably not.

jc9_0 said:

you know what’s even crazier, they were testing flippers in a wind tunnel.
where’s my old buddy who insisted scientists never test water born objects in wind tunnels? dammit.

At the speeds most objects move through the water, there's no difference between air and water because compressibility doesn't come into play. Yes, you need to make sure you scale things correctly since the viscosity is different, but that's pretty trivial. If you want to read up on incompressible flow here's the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompressible_flow

There are tons of fluid mechanics texts out there, but this is actually a very good introduction if at a bit more advanced level:
http://www.amazon.com/Incompressible-Flow-Ronald-L-Panton/dp/0471593583

#7 Wed, 02/03/2010 - 10:42am

Shouldn't have much effect on a paddle since it's not functioning as a wing generally…

Joe, I think you would want to put the tubercles on the front of the rudder to gain any benefit, and if done right there should be one since a rudder is behaving much more like a wing than a paddle.

On the liquid glass coating, it seems like it will help make boats more durable to some things like UV and sanitary (great for those SoCal paddlers after a storm!), but it seems like it won't alter construction techniques much unless I'm missing something. You'd still need gel coat or whatever your mold release winds up being and this would be applied after the fact as a protectant. Probably missing something there. Still, sounds pretty cool although there's a lot of marketing hype in that writeup.

#9 Wed, 02/03/2010 - 11:54am

and we are going to be eating the stuff ....fab.

R

#11 Wed, 02/03/2010 - 10:30pm