Help finding information on bionic tribology (friction) of birds and fish please

I'm writing a report for an engineering class on wear and friction.
my specific topic is:

Bionic Tribology: friction (living creatures in air and water)

i have been searching the university library databases for weeks for information but finding the correct keywords is proving to be quite difficult.

if anyone has an resources dealing with friction, aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, or anything somewhat related to those dealing with airborn or seagoing animals can you please send me links or pdf files please?

my time is running out and i simply haven't been able to find enough information. my paper is due Dec 1, 2005

if possible i would appreciate direct emails to [email protected] but replies in this thread will be fine.

i feel like i could just about vomit because about 20 minutes ago i realised that more than half of the information i've collected so far is useless because it's based on land animals. mostly snakes and burrowing animals.

thank you for your time,

Steve

So basically you have to write a paper about wear on birds? Or about how birds work, or...?

Maybe you should give us some hints first, so it is easier for us to search for you.

Btw, is that library really that small, or are your searching skills not up for the task?

Well, I guess he is talking about friction between fish "skin" and water and things like that, what kind of "materials" are used and what kind of wear occurs, like how nature has taken care of wear, friction...

Dunno, we had a couple a years ago similar thing in our tribology class, nobody could find anything about the subject "incorrect bearing installation" (in finnish: laakereiden asennusvirheet"). So they just went and asked the prof about it and he gave them some material to go on.

So I suggest that you go see the person lecturing the course and ask him if he has anything about it. Or change subject :P One good subject is about mineral and synthetic oils, lots of material available :]

It sounds interesting
I found a pdf in swedish (Resistance decrease in nature - a bad translation of the heading from a univerity in Sweden), but there is some links in the end that may be helpful. It talks about friction according to form and friction increase when flow is to leave the body. It says something about delphins that have small "ridges (fåror in Swedish), don't know the word" that makes the animal to feel the preassure and then they can change the hight/depth of thoose "ridges" to decrease friction.
http://130.235.81.176/~ht/COURSES/MMV/documents/Delfiner.pdf

Hope this can help you in some way
/Tooby

Edit: Funny...Delphins reduce friction while they make jumps in the water (the friction is higher because of the waves)

yes this is the kind of stuff i'm looking for, and i found more of it today. thanx.

i'll check the link you supplied later tonight, thank you again.

i'm sorry if i didn't explain myself very well last night but i was severly stressed. after talking with the teacher today i'm much more at ease.

some example of things i'm going to discuss are:
-dung beetle shell bumps which they copied on to bulldozer blades
-dolphin and whale skin ridges for creating laminar flow at the interface
-pangolin scales and how they protect it while burrowing
-insect and lizard attachment systems allowing them to walk up glass or on cielings.

thanks again for your help guys. i just got home from my class lecture and need a break from the topic but i'll come back to it again later.

speedfreak227

Quote from Frankmd :

So basically you have to write a paper about wear on birds? Or about how birds work, or...?

Maybe you should give us some hints first, so it is easier for us to search for you.

Btw, is that library really that small, or are your searching skills not up for the task?

sorry, it's more about how humans can learn about reducing/increasing frictional forces from solutions in nature.

no the library isn't that small. it's practically a world wide data base. the trouble is finding the correct keywords. so far i've been using:
tribology, animal, nature, friction, biomimetics.

different combinations of those sometimes give me 20000 results. if i reduce the search a bit more i end up with 3 results, none of which are appropriate. other friends of mine in the class have found papers for me while doing research on their own topics but there's NO WAY i would have found those papers with my keywords. those papers didn't use any keywords suitable for me. so basically i'd have to sort through hundreds of thousands of abstracts and just hope and pray.

another problem is that more than half the papers that i've requested from the library have come in CHINESE! why would you write an abstract in english if your paper is in chinese.

the funny that was when i went to see my teacher today. he's chinese by the way. i mentioned that half of the papers i've recieved were "like this" as i put the chinese paper in front of him. he thumbed through it for a few seconds.........read a bit............flipped a page.............read a bit more.................. then said, "OH! YOU CAN'T READ THIS!" hahahahahahha

speedfreak227