A naukri.com initiative
Sciencenewsforstudents
1w
33
Image Credit: Sciencenewsforstudents
Shark intestines inspire pipes with a strictly one-way flow
- Researchers have developed pipes that keep liquids flowing in one direction without valves, inspired by the corkscrew-shaped guts of sharks.
- Shark intestines coils around and around, holding the key to one-way flow of partly digested food through a shark’s intestines.
- Chemist Sarah Keller teamed up with physicist Ido Levin and materials chemist Alshakim Nelson at the University of Washington in Seattle to study how the biological effect occurs inside tubes.
- They 3D printed rigid tubes and 3D printed a set of tubes that could flex. And varied the angle of the helix and how much of the tube a helix covered.
- The team measured the rate of flow coming out of the pipes after hooking them up to flowing water and comparing the flow of water when the helix was pointing down versus when it was pointing up.
- Water flowed two to three times faster when the helix pointed down.
- A soft tube worked even better. Water flowed 15 times faster when it was pushed through a soft tube with the helix pointing down compared with when it pointed up.
- Helix pipes that are 15 times faster might replace valves in hard-to-reach locations in drainage systems or systems where one-way flow is essential.
- Whatever inspires a big scientific breakthrough, the possibilities with everyday things can lead to extraordinary progress.
- More work needs to be done to figure out why bending the pipe sped up the flow.
Read Full Article
2 Likes
For uninterrupted reading, download the app