Designing nature-inspired swimming gloves: a biomimicry design spiral approach

Abstract

AbstractThis study aims to present a comprehensive overview of the technical steps in the biomimicry design spiral and endeavours to apply these steps in the design of a swimming gloves. This involves five steps in the biomimicry design spiral as distillation, translation, discovery, emulation and evaluation. The study then provides four alternative designs inspired by the morphology of crab-eating frog legs (Fejervarya cancrivora). Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation is conducted to assess drag and lift forces. The simulation incorporates parameters such as fluid density, flow speed, water pressure, turbulence intensity and viscosity. The result reveals that the full-cross (FC) swimming glove design exhibits the highest drag force, while the full-straight (FS) design achieves the highest lift force. The usability test is conducted to evaluate the designs by considering five aspects, i.e. material comfort, ease of use, ease of swimming and non-swimming activities, as well as aesthetics. The potential benefits for the industry are also provided in the end of the article.

Keywords

• Biomimicry design spiral
• computational fluid dynamic simulation
• drag and lift force simulation
• nature-inspired design
• swimming gloves
• Pham D T