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Ciro Pabón wrote:I think this is similar enough to the idea you propose, taken from "A whale of a tale".

WhaleCorps turbine blade


Ginsu said in that thread that there was a third, previous thread on the subject, which I could not find (he did not provide a link to it). DaveKillens mentioned vortex generators, they all seem similar to a profane: eagles, sharks, tunas, whales, they all "taste like chicken" to me.

This is an image Dave provided that I think sums up the "principle" behind vortex generators. Maybe humpbacks humps (shouldn't they be called "humpfins"?) work in a similar way:



I think most of them (VGs) are used to avoid stall at extreme angles of attack, as Giblet mentions. In the earlier thread some people said they increase drag when the angle of attack is low.

Finally, on the subject of bionics, I smiled with these pictures: http://www.freakingnews.com/Insect-Airc ... --1133.asp

JMN wrote:Sounds remarkably similar in effect to the benefit from dimples:

thenakedscientists.com wrote: Kat - (...) is this similar to the dimples on golf balls? Is it a similar function that’s going on?

Frank - It has similarities, but there are distinct differences. What a golf ball does by having the dimples on it is to turbulise the air over the surface of the golf ball. So normally air will move in nice, even layers over a surface, and that’s what we call laminar flow. The trouble with laminar flow is it’s not very stable. You can't maintain it at very high speeds or with very large entities. And so, by having the dimples that turbulise the flow over the golf ball, which means that the flow will continue over more of the surface, and as a result, there’s less resistance, and the ball travels further when it’s hit. With the tubercles, or these bumps along the leading edge, what they do is they do create a different flow regime, but not necessarily turbulising the flow. What they do is they produce large swirling masses of flow, what are called vortices. These vortices interact over parts of the wing to actually help to speed up the flow over say, the bump itself and keep that flow attached over the entire surface of the wing, so that again, you don't stall out.