Photos Whale-Inspired Blade
But the finding has lots of applications on land, too. Putting bumps across the leading edge of a wind turbine means the blades can be oriented at a higher angle to capture more of the wind without worrying about stall -- which can damage the turbines. "If it's big and one blade stalls, it can start to shake itself apart," Fish explained. Fish has teamed up with Stephen Dewar to form the Toronto-based company WhalePower to commercialize this approach. They are also targeting industrial fans. "We can move more air and ventilate more area with fewer blades," Fish added. The whale-inspired fans also use 20 percent less power and operate with one-fifth the noise of a standard fan, Dewar said. In newer work, Fish is trying to understand the way the dolphin fluke -- what you might think of as the back "fin" -- propels the dolphin and how that works compared to marine propellers. Marine propellers are rigid, and have a "sweet spot" speed where it gets the maximum efficiency, Fish said. "The dolphin flukes seem to adjust themselves so they can maintain a high efficiency over a wide range of swimming speeds. We're investigating why that is." It appears that the dolphin has the ability to change its fluke shape to maintain efficiency, Fish said. Fish presented his work at a meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in Marseille, France this week. "His discovery of the functional role of the 'bumps' on the flippers of humpbacks is a wonderful example of how clever scientists pursuing interesting questions in animal locomotion can discover novel structures with practical applications in human technology," said Richard Marsh of Northeastern University in Boston, Mass. of Fish's work. "The overall arching message is that we can look to various animals and we can start to see things we can transfer from the natural world into technologies," Fish said. Related Links: Jessica Marshall's blog: EnvironMental Case |
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