Have you ever wondered by boat and ship hulls are rigid when the ocean or water in a lake is fluid? Shouldnt the boat hull bend with the flow of water to reduce drag and speed it up? Sharks wiggle thru the water, so do fish, dolphins and whales. What do they know that we do not know? Well, every time engineers and scientists view nature and see the things that the top of the food chain and niche species have done to redesign themselves thru the evolutionary process they pick up clues as how to do things better. Yet we have not changed our boat hull designs. A shark is said to be five times as efficient as the best boat design that human engineers have built. Five times more efficient, well that is quite a bit isnt it, with its sleek design and special scaled skin. But how can we mimic nature with the materials we have available? Well, I propose dual hull ships like oil tankers, but where the inner hull is rigid and the out hull becomes contoured as the pressure increases against the hull at the various speeds allowing the natural fluid motion to constantly change the hull shape depending on its speed and relative water flows. We have flexible concrete, flexible carbon nanotube sheets and many other polymer muscle type materials which are all coming on line now which can help us design faster, sleeker and more fuel efficient boats, ships and submarine. Perhaps we can use these techniques for pontoons on aircraft floats and even barges moving down rivers. Think of all the possibilities before us? |
