wmjinman -- It's been done:
Just not well.
ChazInMT -- Did you ever *really* look at shark skin?
I'd like to see one of those plates in isolation; they must interlock.
Look at the boxfish skin at 1:30 in the following video. It's a triangulated mesh.
All -- Did I mention testing in a water flume? Why,
yes I did.
Bionic Car | Mercedes-Benz
At 0:23 to 0:44 they show Mercedes Benz' well-paid engineers using a 1/3 scale clay model underwater—with SCUBA. The pulsed walls of air bubbles is something I've wanted to see.
Now I want to see pulsed bubbles of florescent green smoke.
aerohead -- Consider this a response to you post
here.
Did you look at
Suzuka's work? Desktop tuft testing? If you watch Part 1 you might well be skeptical, but in Part 4 he analyzes his results and compares with his full-scale moving floor tunnel work. His resumé is in Part 5