http://www.swimwellblog.com/archives/147 The Blog of Terry Laughlin Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:38:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.swimwellblog.com/archives/147/comment-page-1#comment-11 Terry Laughlin Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:06:21 +0000 http://www.swimwellblog.com/?p=147#comment-11 I got the figures from an article in Nov 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics which related the design work done by a team of engineers from DARPA, the Defense Dept's technical arm. They'd been tasked with designing a new swim foil for the Navy Seals. They studied human swimmers and compared them with dolphins, calculating the mechanical efficiency (conversion of horsepower into forward motion) of humans at 3% -- 40% lower than the conservative figure I put into the blog as compared to an 80% estimate for the efficiency of dolphins. This struck me as credible because I'd seen a previous estimate by the Univ of Buffalo for the efficiency of elite swimmers at 9%. They also said the primary difference observed between humans and dolphins was the dolphins far superior capacity for "active streamlining." I got the figures from an article in Nov 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics which related the design work done by a team of engineers from DARPA, the Defense Dept’s technical arm. They’d been tasked with designing a new swim foil for the Navy Seals. They studied human swimmers and compared them with dolphins, calculating the mechanical efficiency (conversion of horsepower into forward motion) of humans at 3% — 40% lower than the conservative figure I put into the blog as compared to an 80% estimate for the efficiency of dolphins. This struck me as credible because I’d seen a previous estimate by the Univ of Buffalo for the efficiency of elite swimmers at 9%.
They also said the primary difference observed between humans and dolphins was the dolphins far superior capacity for “active streamlining.”

]]> http://www.swimwellblog.com/archives/147/comment-page-1#comment-10 Steven Munatones Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:26:11 +0000 http://www.swimwellblog.com/?p=147#comment-10 How did you calculate the horsepower of a swimmer (i.e., "...most human swimmers convert 5% or less of their horsepower into forward propulsion...")? How did you calculate the horsepower of a swimmer (i.e., “…most human swimmers convert 5% or less of their horsepower into forward propulsion…”)?

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