Humpback whale secret may help helicopters fly faster
DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology / DLR Institute of Aeroelasticity
Helicopters can deliver military troops or rescue the wounded in tight spaces, but their rotating blade design also puts a hard limit on their speed and maneuverability. Now researchers have begun flight-testing an unlikely fix inspired by the underwater ballet of humpback whales.
The potentially cheap solution uses small bumps along the front edge of the helicopter blades similar to bumps found on the large pectoral fins of humpback whales. Such bumps give an aerodynamic edge that delays the moment of “stalling” when there’s not enough lift to keep the whale from sinking — or a helicopter from stalling out at top speeds.
“Stalling is one of the most serious problems in helicopter aerodynamics — and one of the most complex,” said Kai Richter from the DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology in Germany.
Helicopters face a speed limit because their backward-moving rotor blade goes against their forward motion of flight. That problem leads to turbulence and loss of lift, as well as strong forces acting on the rotor, which eventually cause the helicopter to stall out.
German researchers patented the bump idea for helicopters, under the name “Leading-Edge Vortex Generators.” Wind tunnel experiments led to a test flight with a helicopter carrying 186 rubber bumps —each less than a quarter of an inch long — glued to its four rotor blades.
“The pilots have already noticed a difference in the behavior of the rotor blades,” Richter said. “The next step is a flight using special measuring equipment to accurately record the effects.”
If testing goes well, existing helicopters could get a speed boost with simple retrofits. New helicopters could have the design built into their titanium blades during manufacturing.
The natural bump design already helps humpback whales swim at speeds of up to 16.5 miles per hour, or about five times faster than the fastest human swimmer.
“Research has shown that these bumps cause stalling to occur significantly later underwater and increase buoyancy,” said Holger Mai from the DLR Institute of Aeroelasticity in Germany. “Flow phenomena in water are similar to those in air; they just need to be scaled accordingly.”
Source: Innovation News Daily
Not a scratch
Scorpions may have lessons to teach aircraft designers
The north African desert scorpion, Androctonus australis, is a hardy creature. Most animals that live in deserts dig burrows to protect themselves from the sand-laden wind. Not Androctonus. It usually toughs things out at the surface. Yet when the sand whips by at speeds that would strip paint away from steel, the scorpion is able to scurry off without apparent damage. Han Zhiwu of Jilin University, in China, and his colleagues wondered why.
Their curiosity is not just academic. Aircraft engines and helicopter rotor-blades are constantly abraded by atmospheric dust, and a way of slowing down this abrasion would be welcome. Dr Han suspects that scorpions may provide an answer. As he writes in Langmuir, he has discovered that the surface of Androctonus’s exoskeleton is odd. And when that oddness is translated into other materials it seems to protect them, as well.
Dr Han’s investigations began by scouring the pet shops of Changchun, where the university is located, for scorpions. Having obtained his specimens, he photographed them under a microscope, using ultraviolet light. This made the animals’ exoskeletons, which are composed of a sugar-based polymer called chitin, fluoresce—thus revealing details of their surface features. The team found that Androctonus armour is covered with dome-shaped granules that are 10 microns high and between 25 and 80 microns across. These, they suspected, were the key to its insouciance in the face of sandstorms.
To check, they took further photographs. In particular, they used a laser scanning system to make a three-dimensional map of the armour and then plugged the result into a computer program that blasted the virtual armour with virtual sand grains at various angles of attack. This process revealed that the granules were disturbing the air flow near the skeleton’s surface in ways that appeared to be reducing the erosion rate. Their model suggested that if scorpion exoskeletons were smooth, they would experience almost twice the erosion rate that they actually do.
Having tried things out in a computer, the team then tried them for real. They placed samples of steel in a wind tunnel and fired grains of sand at them using compressed air. One piece of steel was smooth, but the others had grooves of different heights, widths and separations, inspired by scorpion exoskeleton, etched onto their surfaces. Each sample was exposed to the lab-generated sandstorm for five minutes and then weighed to find out how badly it had been eroded.
The upshot was that the pattern most resembling scorpion armour—with grooves that were 2mm apart, 5mm wide and 4mm high—proved best able to withstand the assault. Though not as good as the computer model suggested real scorpion geometry is, such grooving nevertheless cut erosion by a fifth, compared with a smooth steel surface. The lesson for aircraft makers, Dr Han suggests, is that a little surface irregularity might help to prolong the active lives of planes and helicopters, as well as those of scorpions.
Source: The Economist
Great inspiring talk from Wilson Miner from the 2011 Build Conference in Belfast.
During his talk, Miner reminds us about how technologies and people who create them impact and shape our world.
Milner was the original designer for EveryBlock and part of the team developing Django, and he was interactive designer for Apple working on the redesign of Apple.com
Currently, Miner is head of design for Rdio.
The making of Acciaio serie and interview with Max Lipsey.
Source: SightUnseen
Danish designer Ole Jensen working with clay on his workshop in Copenhagen.
Video source: Video.normann-copenhagen.com
A look at the making of a Branca Chair, by Industrial Facility for Mattiazzi.
Branca is inspired by wooden branches that turn, twist, meet and branch off.
Like wooden branches on a tree, Branca is a chair that is familiar to the eye.
The result is comfort to the eye, to the body and to the hand.
Design: Sam Hecht / Industrial Facility, 2010 - industrialfacility.co.uk
Manufacturer: Mattiazzi SpA - mattiazzi.eu
Directed / Camera / Edit: Juriaan Booij - juriaanbooij.com
Source: juriaanbooij.com
An educational video on the extrusion process.
Meet Nick Sambrato. He runs a print shop in Orlando, Florida called Mama’s Sauce.
At a time in history when the print industry is pouncing from one space-age technological advancement to the next, Nick has decided to take a giant leap backwards into the industrial revolution.
Meet the Kluge letterpress. An 2,000 pound, cast iron, electric powered monstrosity of vacillating rods, giant spinning wheels and pneumatic hoses. The Kluge is Nick’s weapon of choice in his battle against the future.
So why does Nick use the Kluge? A clearly outdated, cumbersome and obsolete machine? The same reason any craftsman uses any tool: for the quality of the finished product. A letterpress offers a tangible, three-dimensional look and feel to the printed image that no other technology can replicate.
Let Nick take you on a trip back in time as he runs through the process of turning an ordinary piece of paper stock into work of art.
produced by: Fiction
fctn.tv
Second film by Made by Hand, a short film series celebrating the people who make things by hand — sustainably, locally, and with a love for their craft.
Writer turned knife maker Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn talks about the human element of craft, and the potential for a skill to mature into an art. And in sharing his story, he alights on the real meaning of handmade—a movement whose riches are measured in people, not cash.
Source: Made by Hand
John Maeda: Innovation is born when art meets science
A graphic designer and computer scientist, known for his work on the online computer game Second Life, as well as the author of bestselling self-help book The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda has made great use of dual educations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and art school. Drawing from his experiences in these two disciplines, the 44-year-old has come to believe that too stark a distinction is drawn between science and the arts. It is Maeda’s conviction that scientists need art and artists in their professional lives in order to invent and innovate successfully, and with a particular focus on education he has toured the world to promote the idea that government-approved “Stem” subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) should be widened to include art; “turning Stem into Steam,” as he puts it. This week Maeda, who is president of the Rhode Island School of Design, will expound on these ideas at an experimental installation at London’s Riflemaker gallery, where he will “dispense wisdom from a sandpit”. See Riflemaker.org for more on this eccentric project.
Why does science need artists?
We seem to forget that innovation doesn’t just come from equations or new kinds of chemicals, it comes from a human place. Innovation in the sciences is always linked in some way, either directly or indirectly, to a human experience. And human experiences happen through engaging with the arts – listening to music, say, or seeing a piece of art.
So to help them become more humanist, you’d parachute artists and musicians into laboratories?
Which already happens to some degree with artist-in-residence programmes in scientific labs. They’re usually very small, but these programmes are seen as quite desirable by scientists. Because all scientists are humans, and they are humanists inside, and by bringing that part out, innovation happens more naturally.
Can you think of an example where an injection of the arts has helped the sciences?
I recently saw something in Time magazine, a famous Nobel laureate chemist making molecular models out of clay. It shows how these more fluid, abstract materials traditionally belonging to the artist lend themselves better to ways of thinking about the world, as opposed to some kind of ball-and-stick model that shows a constrained view. Art helps you see things in a less constrained space. Our economy is built upon convergent thinkers, people that execute things, get them done. But artists and designers are divergent thinkers: they expand the horizon of possibilities. Superior innovation comes from bringing divergents (the artists and designers) and convergents (science and engineering) together.
Such as?
Look at Apple’s iPod. A perfect example of technology – an MP3 player – that existed for a long time but that nobody ever wanted, until design made it something desirable, useful, integrated into your lifestyle. Look at the success of Mint.com [a colourful money-management website] which has recently been sold. It’s an app in which 80% of the experience is what you see, how you touch it. Not the technology. I’m also interested in how art and design links into leadership. Because leaders now are facing a very chaotic landscape, things are no longer black and white, things are harder to predict. What better mindset to adopt than the artist’s, who is very used to living in an ambiguous space? Real innovation doesn’t just come from technology, it comes from places like art and design.
George Osborne recently announced protection in the higher-education cuts for the so-called Stem subjects, but not the arts. Is this blinkered?
You know, it’s easy for politicians to look at the measurability of a science and maths education. I mean, fill out 100 questions, you get 100 right or 50 right or zero right, it’s easy to measure. There’s no test that can give you a score from zero to 100 on the question, “Is this student a good writer?” And society’s so focused on measurement. It’s awkward and sad. Singapore or Japan are highly known test-taking countries focused on science and engineering, yet are desperate to find innovation. And where are they looking? They’re looking to the west for new ideas. It’s kind of like a dog chasing after its tail a little bit – this weeding out of the idea that expression, something that exists in the intuition space, can matter. I mean, it’s ironic that the people who talk about these kind of things [cuts to the arts] are all counting on things to carry their message – like images, the written word – as givens.
Do you think that scientists tend to lack humanity?
Scientists would say otherwise. But scientists strive to be pure, to live in what’s called a “concept space”. And by doing so they tend to move away from the core humanist principles that actually put those two arms and legs on them in the first place. The best scientists that I’ve met are those that are humanists and scientists at the same time.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
