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My Research
My Research
My research aims to examine the effectiveness of different skin structures on watercraft design from a couple of the fastest swimmers in the ocean.
The first test subject is the Shortfin Mako shark. Known as the fastest species of sharks, the mako's skin has been tested thoroughly and has become a proven method in drag reduction on boats and even Olympic swimsuits.
The second is the European Sea Bass. Though the sea bass is much less tested on its applications to watercraft efficiency, its skin morphology shows a lot of promise for its drag reductive qualities.
Watercraft can inhabit very different environments, whether that's on rough and turbulent seas or the deep open ocean. Additionally, the same can be said for these two creatures. Comparing them in different water conditions, mainly turbulence, will hopefully reveal something about their evolutional morphology in conjunction to their comparative successes in reducing drag throughout these cases: a characteristic that could highly improve watercraft efficiency.
The Gap
The Gap
Research into sharkskin morphology in drag reduction is already an extremely well researched topic in the scientific community. However, when it comes to practical applications of this strategy, sharkskin has maintained the only stake. Most research goes on to expand on possible applications of sharkskin while neglecting the potential for other sources of biomimicry. In this way, it isn’t clear how effective these sharkskin methods are compared to other organisms.
This opens the opportunity to compare sharkskin, a proven method of drag reduction, with another organism: the European sea bass, another proven method. Because of the lack of comparison, there is a lack of nuance applied to what conditions work best for each organism. For example, shortfin makos are known to reside in less turbulent open waters while for the European sea bass, it’s the opposite. As neither species has been tested in water conditions of varying turbulence, it’s difficult to say which organism might gain an advantage in drag reduction because of the differences in their evolutionary environments. Differing results open up the potential to optimize specific watercraft based on their traveling territory.
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