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John O | October 2016

MIT scientists developing beaver-inspired wetsuits


a group of mit engineers, inspired by aquatic mammals such as sea otters and beavers that stay warm and in some cases dry while diving in water, have explored a new “furry” material that traps air between the individual hairs, preserving heat. the study detailed the process in which mammals such as beavers are able to remain insulated under water and will now take that knowledge to create better wet suits for humans.

 

beaver_wetsuits_600

(youtube)

 

in a statement on the mit website, anette (peko) hosoi, a professor of mechanical engineering and associate head of the department at mit, said, “we are particularly interested in wetsuits for surfing, where the athlete moves frequently between air and water environments. we can control the length, spacing, and arrangement of hairs, which allows us to design textures to match certain dive speeds and maximize the wetsuit's dry region.” 

 

according to the mit site, the study began during a trip to taiwan and was undertaken by mit’s ste@m (sports technology and education) program that explores advances in sports technologies.

 

hosoi explained, “surfers, who go in and out of the water, want to be nimble and shed water as quickly as possible when out of the water, but retain the thermal management properties to stay warm when they are submerged.”

 

the team set to work documenting the mechanical process that keeps semi-aquatic mammals warm. the engineers created molds for fur-like materials and tested it in liquid at various speeds and measuring the air that is trapped in the hairs. the experiments showed that the layer of air created was dependent on the spacing of the hairs and the speed at which the material was submerged.

 

with each hair represented as a tube, the engineers used cfd modeling to examine the flow of liquid and the changes in pressure. thanks to their efforts, it was now possible to determine what hair density and length would be effective.

 

the full findings can be found at http://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/physrevfluids.1.033905. the abstract reads:

 

“motivated by diving semiaquatic mammals, we investigate the mechanism of dynamic air entrainment in hairy surfaces submerged in liquid. hairy surfaces are cast out of polydimethylsiloxane elastomer and plunged into a fluid bath at different velocities.

 

“experimentally, we find that the amount of air entrained is greater than what is expected for smooth surfaces. theoretically, we show that the hairy surface can be considered as a porous medium and we describe the air entrainment via a competition between the hydrostatic forcing and the viscous resistance in the pores.

 

“a phase diagram that includes data from our experiments and biological data from diving semiaquatic mammals is included to place the model system in a biological context and predict the regime for which the animal is protected by a plastron of air.”

 

the research project is detailed on the mit website at http://news.mit.edu/2016/beaver-inspired-wetsuits-surfers-1005.

 

learn more about furry wetsuit research in the video below:


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