Caltech aeronautic and bio-engineering professor Dr. John Dabiri explained to “TechKnow” how schools of fish could inform and improve the design of wind farms.
Dabiri is also studying another sea creature for clues on improving real world energy efficiencies—jellyfish.
“They’re so simple to begin with, but these are the first animals to figure out how to swim in the ocean,” he says. “They’re about 500 million years old, and they’re very efficient in how they use energy. We as engineers are interested in stealing those ideas and using them for different technologies that would allow us to use less fuel—for example, in underwater vehicles."
The key to jellyfish efficiency is their vortex ring—“not unlike the smoke ring you can make with a cigar,” Dabiri explains. It makes them able to move through the water more effectively than jet propulsion systems used by underwater vehicles.
“The U.S. Navy has been particularly interested in this technology for developing underwater vehicles that use less energy,” Dabiri says. “This helps them reduce the cost of the various missions they support, but it also enables new missions that they can’t do currently.”
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