Quote:
Originally Posted by stillsearching
........... the skin moves up and down a bit with the particular forces preventing turbulence or cavitation of any sort.........
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The shark skin also has a micro texture similar to tiny scales which also makes a contribution as I understand it.
You are right in that there are many similarities between air and water as both fall under
fluid dynamics. However air has boundary layer flow, where as water has parasitic drag.
Over at the boatdesign.net forum, people (experts) are always hesitant to draw too many similarities between air and water. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for this.
However to a layman like myself, golf ball dimples are like fish scales in some respect, so why cannot a flickering skin make a difference?
In short, I cannot answer your question, but think it's a good one.
I think that I've read before that a pulsating skin on air vehicles is a very bad thing as it disrupts the boundary layer of air too much and causes more drag. However I'd like to know a little more about the "why" of this if true.