In reply to Appleseed :
Right, but racecars are pretty easy to clean, and aero surfaces too.
If airlines or wind turbine operators do the math and will save money by more frequent cleaning, they will.
Meanwhile, research work on anti-stick and anti-icing methods continues, for obvious reasons.
Clean up after the race is simple. Keeping that surface clean during the race is something else. Race cars crossing the finish line are filthy.
clshore said:In wind tunnel tests, they found lift/drag improvements of up to 323 percent.
So if it make no difference at all, it still fits their "up to" claims...
Also, they guarantee that you can not ever achieve 324% improvement.
This all comes from my annoyance at claims like "make up to $10,000 a month in your spare time."
clshore said:In reply to Appleseed :
Right, but racecars are pretty easy to clean, and aero surfaces too.
If airlines or wind turbine operators do the math and will save money by more frequent cleaning, they will.
Meanwhile, research work on anti-stick and anti-icing methods continues, for obvious reasons.
Keep in mind, Wind Turbines and Airliners operate in very different aerodynamic environments to each other and to race cars... and so they prioritizes cleaning surfaces frequently for different reasons. They also frequently have time when the device is not in use, and a financial incentive for doing the cleaning. Their surfaces are also between one and two orders of magnitude greater than a race car (depending on what part of the race car you're looking at), and their in-flow into the lifting surfaces is much closer to uniform. I don't see many endurance racing teams delaying time in the pits to clean bugs off anywhere other than the windshield.
I'd still like to read the original paper; since the executive summary leaves more questions than answers to me. Plus, looking at the images of the shark VG's... I suspect that a lot of the benefit has to do with the shark keeping attached flow despite movement of the shark's body. So, we'll be most likely to see the benefit of this shape in moving-surfaces. but, it's difficult to make those kinds of declarations without access to the original research.
Shark nerd here. If you pet a shark head to tail like a dog, it will hurt. The “scales” point forward.
As far as putting it on a car, it would be ridiculously expensive.
"As far as putting it on a car, it would be ridiculously expensive."
(shot of a team of UAW workers wearing jewelers loupes, applying shark denticles from a bucket using tweezers and a tube of super glue)
That's what they said about building aircraft using carbon fiber.
How many body panels today are molded plastic?
And if the mold has the sharkskin pattern on the inside ...
Enyar said:Ill take some for my sailboat hull!
Riblets like NASA made for Stars & Stripes sailing? Must be good because they won an America's Cup and Olympic Gold before getting banned from competition.
I thought there was another boat that set a record for circumnavigation with shark skin like coating but I'm coming up short on a reference.
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