Dr. Ning Pan's Group
TEXTILE ENGINEERING
Mechanics of Materials

Mechanics of Fibrous Materials


Nonlinearity ¨C Finite Elasticity

Mixture Theories


Biomimesis in High-tech Swim Suits

Resistive Force ¨C body drag

  • Little is known about the magnitude of the wave drag relative to the other drag components

  • Balance between skin friction and head resistance depends upon Reynolds number (NR=¦Ñva/¦Ç)

    • NR < 2000 Skin friction dominant

    • NR > 2000 Head resistance dominant


Resistive Force ¨C Human being

  • NR >> 2000 head resistance dominant

  • Experimental confirmed this theoretical prediction.

  • Decrease skin friction contribute relatively small to the reduction of resistive drag force.


Mechanism of SPEEDO Fastskin

  • Mimics the sharkskin with drag-reducing grooves.

  • Reduce drag by channeling the water along grooves in the fabric.

  • These grooves allow the water to spiral in microscopic vortices.

  • Fastskin passive drag values were significantly less than normal swimsuits.


Please view the Privacy Policy  Copyright © 2011 Dr. Ning Pan's Website All Rights Reserved.