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Swimsuit Design Uses Supercomputing
Roland Piquepaille writes "These days, most competitive swimmers wear some type of body suit to reduce high skin-friction drag from water. And makers of swimwear are already busy working on new models for the Olympics 2008. According to Textile & Apparel, Speedo is even using a supercomputer to refine its designs. Its engineers run Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program on an SGI Altix system."
Two words I never wanted to see in the same paragraph.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
It's nice to see SGI working on winning gold medals in Swimming. They just need to find out how to get rid of the meat bag causing all that drag on their wonderfully designed swimsuits.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Does this mean Computer magazines are going to start having yearly swimsuit editions? This could be a good and a bad thing.
"Meanwhile, the CFD analysis has already indicated that there is a more separated flow, where the water actually leaves the surface of the swimmer, for females than males, so the designs for male and female suits should be different."
Translation: Boobs and hips create additional drag. Make the suits tighter in the chest and hips for women.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Did you win?
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
And, yet, wasting computer resources on hosting and posting on Slashdot is acceptable?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
What they need to do is use this computing power to find a way to make competitive swimsuits actually look good on women, instead of hiding all of the good stuff.
That reminds me of an old limerick. Sing along if you know it...
Taco,
Burrito,
What's that in your Speedo?
But in this case, it should be...
Jobs,
or Gates,
Who designed your Speedo?
Maybe it doesn't rhyme, but now all of you are thinking of Bill Gates in a thong. Ha.
The ancient olympics were done in the nude.
Nude swimming is probably kind of boring. Much better in the nude:
* winter events
* combat sports
* tennis, ping pong, and badmitten
* anything involving a horse
Obviously in womens olypic competition they should ban swimsuits all together. Not only would that level the playing field... viewership would SKY ROCKET!!! 10x at least!
snowulf.com
There's a joke in here somewhere....mumble mumble Cindy Crawford mumble mumble Beowolf cluster mumble mumble Sports Illustrated mumble mumble.
I'm going to karma hell. I don't mind.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
Okay, I can see needing a supercomputer for designing Pam Anderson's bra, but not for swimsuits...
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Am I the only one that read that as `Swimsuit Competition uses Supercomputer`?
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
"According to an apocryphal story, Werner Heisenberg was asked what he would ask God, given the opportunity. His reply was: "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." A similar witticism has been attributed to Horace Lamb (who had published a noted text book on Hydrodynamics)--his choice being quantum mechanics (instead of relativity) and turbulence. Lamb was quoted as saying in a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, "I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic."
The Olympics should be about being the best athlete - not who can squeeze out a few fractions of a second because they have better/more expensive swimware. I don't mind using technology for training and conditioning, but in the field (or in this case, the pool) the equipment one has shouldn't be the deciding factor.
Love sees no species.
Is there actually a "Silicone Technology" company?
Or did someone screw up their reporting?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
since athletes can't go further into record breaking all by themselves, let's start artificial methods of obtaining a few more milliseconds...
when are we going to see genetically engineered super athletes?
I don't feel like it...
Is it only me, that "SuperComputer Calculated Swimsuits " turns me on ?
Not actually true. I'm sure that if you made the swimmers compete nude, instead of competing to see who could have the most high-tech swimsuit, the focus would switch to who could create the most high-tech water-repellent skin creme. Some sort of wax or silicone, perhaps, that lowered the water resistance below what was normal for human skin. Or maybe some sort of treatment that made the body produce more oil (or less oil -- I don't know if oily skin has less or more resistance through water).
Anything that tries to stop technology and innovation from affecting a sport is inherently doomed to failure. A better approach would be to embrace innovation, in all sports, since this would have the effect of making the sports more interesting, and more relevant to society in general (by encouraging technological development, things would be produced that benefit everyone -- putting the focus on athleticism, while amusing to watch, doesn't produce any tangible benefit for the rest of us).
However, I agree, nude sports would get much better television ratings. Find some way to justify nude beach volleyball, and you have yourself a winner.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
SGI is still able to make the news for something other than being on the verge of final death.
For example, it was reputed that the shark skin suits of the past couple olympics were the reasons for new world records, though I have not seem any anylsis that showed the more records were set. Putting the suits on olympics swimmers, often with compensation, seems more a marketing thing than a performance thing. All attire options are about the same, so why not choose the option that will bring in a little cash. It is good investment for the company as consumers will see the product, percieve value, and be more willing to pay the offered price.
None of which proves the suit is a useful product. In fact when reading about the suits, the issue seems more about insuring the suit is not counterproductive rather than significantly improving on bare skin. In the past they have said things "like four percent impovement over the past model", and then cited all the deficiencies of the past model.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The recent SciAm special issue, Becoming Human has an article on the Bonobos -- "Bonobo Sex and Society" that covers it in more detail.
I'm going to regret posting this and admitting I know this, aren't I?
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Why not? It's essentially a complex fluid dynamics/drag problem. While it may not seem so impressive to you, I'm sure the models they develop while solving this problem will find more useful applications.
Wikipedia
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"Why doesn't speedo put it's supercomputer time to some good use, like finding ways to end poverty or help more efficiently after natural disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorism or volcanic eruptions?"
Unlike what TV and movies have told you, you cannot just type in "How do we end poverty?" into a super computer and just wait for it to respond.
"In a world where the US is still being niggardly over paying slavery reparations, how can anyone find it acceptable to flagrantly waste resources in this way?"
Some company had the money to spend and they spent it. 'Super-computers' aren't some rare Earth resource that can only be used by the elite. (In other words, we're not talking about Univac.) They're built when they're needed by the entities that have the money to pay for them. This is actually a Good Thing TM. Computers get better, prices come down, 'super' computing resources are used for a broader range of applications.
On another note, I vote we end the "couldn't we spend our time curing cancer?" rationale that tends to earn karma around here. No, we cannot use an aeronautics engineer from Boeing to cure cancer. Open Source programmers cannot write drinkable water for third world countries. Ending consumerism in the United States won't feed the world. This planet thrives on diversity. Embrace it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a swimmer myself, and when I was younger I trained with the ordinary, plain-vanilla speedos. Lately, our coach has been encouraging the use of the more high-tech suit designs for competitions, so I got ahold of one of those "fastskin" suits that Speedo sells. Surprisingly enough, you can actually feel the difference. (And it shaved a second or two off my times as well.)
So if Speedo is going through such great lengths to improve their suits, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm just impressed that a suit design can make such a big difference.
Still, I'm a traditionalist. I don't need no newfangled swimsuits to win a competition! Skinnydipping forever!
GazetteNET has managed to get their hands on a leaked picture of the new recommended swimming helmet designed by the supercomputing software. Here's the photo. Looks pretty slick to me. :)
g
http://www.gazettenet.com/business/02242003/14.jp