An evaluation of swimsuit performance

Abstract

Hydrodynamics plays an important role in swimming. Recently, swimsuits have been aggressively marketed, principally as a means for reducing the skin friction component of the total drag, thereby conferring a competitive advantage over other swimmers. Currently a range of swimsuits are available in the market however their aerodynamic data is hardly available in the public domain. Additionally, there is no standard methodology for the evaluation of hydrodynamic performance of swimsuits. The primary purpose of this work is to evaluate the hydrodynamic properties of a series of swimsuits at a macroscopic level. A standard cylindrical methodology has been developed in wind tunnel measurement of aero/hydrodynamic properties (drag and lift). Current production swimsuits including Diana and Spalding have been tested. All tests were conducted at a range of speeds. The findings indicate that there is a notable variation in aerodynamic properties among swimsuits.