Learning From A Whales Flippers..

What can aircraft designers learn from the humpback whale ?
A great deal it seems.
An animal humpback weighs about 30 tons-- as much as a loaded truck and has a relatively stiff body with large winglike flippers.

This 40- foot - long animal is remarkable agile under water.
For example , when feeding , a humpback may swim in upward spiraling circles beneath a prospective meal of crustaceans or fish ,
all the while blowing a stream of bubbles.
This bubble net , as small as five feet in diameter , corrals the creatures at the surface. The whale then snaps up it's tidy meal.
What particularly intriged researchers was how this stiff -bodied creature turns in what seem to be impossibly tight circles.

They discovered that the shape of the whales flippers holds the secret..The leading edge of it's flippers is not smooth ,
like an aircraft's wing,
but serrated , with a row of protruding bumps called tubercles.
As the whale slicies through the water, theses tubercles increase lift and reduce drag. How ?

The journal Natural History explains that tubercles make the water accelerates over the flipper in the organized rotating flow ,
even when the whale is rising at very steep angles.
If the flipper had a smooth leading edge,
the whale would be unable to make such tight rising turns because the water would churn and eddy behind the flipper and cease to lift.
What practical applications does this discovery promise ?

Aircraft wings based on the design would evidently need fewer wing flaps or other mechanical devices to alter airflow.
Such wings would be safer and easier to maintain.
Biomechanics expert John Long believes that someday soon
" we may see every single jetliner with bumps of humpback whale flippers. "