Marsh grass shrimp, despite their small size, are zippy swimmers. They move using a series of closely-spaced legs that stroke asynchronously. Researchers found that the flexibility and stiffness of the Keep reading
Tag: drag reduction
“Reconfiguring It Out”
Leaves flutter and bend in the breeze, changing their shape in response to the flow. Here, researchers investigate this behavior using flexible disks pulled through water. The more flexible the Keep reading
Measuring Drag
After a noticeable rise in the prevalence of home runs beginning in 2015, Major League Baseball commissioned a report that found the increase was caused by a small 3% reduction Keep reading
Beijing 2022: Ski Jumping
In ski jumping, aerodynamics are paramount. Each jump consists of four segments: the in-run, take-off, flight, and landing. Of these, aerodynamics dominates in the in-run — where jumpers streamline themselves Keep reading
RC Ground Effect Plane
The ekranoplan was a massive, Soviet-era aircraft that relied on ground effect to stay aloft. In this video, RC pilots test out their own homemade version of the craft, including Keep reading
Sea Sponge Hydrodynamics
The Venus’s flower basket is a sea sponge that lives at depths of 100-1000 meters. Its intricate latticework skeleton has long fascinated engineers for its structural mechanics, but a new Keep reading
Streamlining Circa 1936
This 1936 promotional film by Chevrolet explains the concept of streamlining objects to reduce their drag. And it actually does a pretty nice job of it, including some wind tunnel Keep reading
Flexible Filament Reduces Drag
Most shapes aren’t streamlined for fluid flow. We call these bulky, often boxy shapes, bluff bodies. Above, we see two examples of a bluff body, a flat plate, in a Keep reading
Bristling Sharkskin Fights Separation
The speedy shortfin mako shark has a secret weapon to fight drag: bristling denticles that line its fins and tail. Denticles are tiny, anvil-shaped enamel scales on the mako’s skin. Keep reading
Gliding Birds Get Extra Lift From Their Tails
Gorgeous new research highlights some of the differences between fixed-wing flight and birds. Researchers trained a barn owl, tawny owl, and goshawk to glide through a cloud of helium-filled bubbles Keep reading