Great snip re: how and why data can help you innovate, build a business and get some medals:
Ansys today announced that they helped design the Speedo swim-suits that caused all the stir at the Beijing Olympics. They said:
- The majority of medals won and world records broken there were achieved by competitors wearing swimsuits designed in part with software from Ansys (the Speedo LZR RACER suit).
- Get this: 23 out of 25 world records, 47 gold medals, and 89% of all swimming medals were won by athletes wearing the Speedo LZR RACER suit.
- Ansys says a Speedo computational fluid dynamics expert (Barry Bixler) utilized Ansys software to simulate the flow of water around a virtual swimmer’s body, identifying areas of passive drag and focusing on the swimmer’s body while it is in a streamlined position.
- This streamlined position occurs just after the swimmer dives into the water (before the strokes) – the “glide position”, which accounts for about 30%, so lessening drag in this position is critically important in a competitive race situation.
- At any rate, after all their simulation, Ansys deliberately shaped sections of the suit to be lower friction than they had been previously. In doing so, they reduced friction drag by a total of 24% compared to the base material of the suit. And, in tests, swimmers saw a 4% increase in speed for starts, sprints and turns when wearing the suit compared to runs in their training swimwear.
So what?
“Making complex design decisions straightforward”. A perfect example of turning data into insight. What a great business.
