Engineers are getting creative with nature to make underwater exploring tools like sonar arrays work better and quieter.
By looking closely at sharks’ skin, they’ve found a way to improve these tools, making it easier for submarines and ships to find what they’re searching for under the sea without making too much noise.
When submarines or ships pull sonar arrays through the water, they can get pretty loud.
This noise can mess with the sonar’s ability to detect things underwater, which is a big problem for tasks like exploring the ocean floor or keeping an eye out for security threats.
But, a team of smart engineers thinks shark skin might have the answer to this noisy issue.
Shark skin has tiny grooves called riblets that are really good at cutting down water drag, which is kind of like when you try to walk through a strong wind.
The engineers, led by Grace Gu from the University of California, Berkeley, wondered if these riblets could also make sonar arrays quieter by doing the same thing underwater.
To see if their idea would work, they used computer simulations to test how water moves around sonar arrays with shark-skin-like surfaces. They tried out different shapes and patterns to see which one was the best at being quiet and smooth in the water.
They found that a certain kind of riblet design, which was rectangular, did the best job. It made the arrays quieter by about 14.3% and also reduced drag by 5.1% compared to smooth surfaces.
Even more, when the riblets were made finer and placed closer together, they could cut down drag by an extra 25.7%.
This research is exciting because it shows that copying shark skin can make underwater tools work better in different ways, from being quieter to moving through water more easily. This is not just good news for submarines and ships but also for marine life, as quieter underwater devices mean less disturbance for them.
The idea of using nature to inspire new technologies isn’t new, but this shark skin-inspired study is a cool example of how looking at the natural world can lead to big improvements in how we make and use our gadgets.
The team behind this research hopes their work will lead to even more nature-inspired solutions in the future.
Source: UC Berkeley.
