For many years, scientists have been trying to understand insects’ secrets to find ways to provide clean water to communities in hot spots of water shortages. Now, a team of researchers has a deeper understanding of the structure on the insect’s body that helps it collect water.
When the Namib Desert beetle (Stenocara gracilipes) collects mist, droplets of water fall into the abdomen and roll down its body. Researchers have spent decades trying to discover how this insect transports water droplets from the surface of the body to its mouth. But first, the beetle must collect water droplets. So, Hunter King, a physicist at Akron University in Ohio and colleagues focused on the shape and physical structure of beetles that increase the amount of water droplets they can get from the captured air. how the head.
The team used 3D prints to create several spheres with different surface textures: bumpy, slotted and smooth and tested them in a specially designed wind tunnel to see if they could attract. How much water from the fog breeze. They discovered that bumpy surfaces are a magnet for fogging: A rough surface sphere catches droplets nearly 2.5 times more efficiently than a smooth sphere of the same surface area.
To understand what happens at the microscopic level, King (from the research team) turned to animal expert Mattia Gazzola and student Fan Kiat Chan graduated from the University of Illinois - Urbana. Gazzola Laboratory specializes in hydrodynamic simulation. The two researchers created a computer model to see how different hydrodynamics act on water droplets, making them more or less likely to stick to a spherical structure surface.
An important factor the team discovered was how to lubricate the surface of spherical structures. If there was always a thin film of water, the droplets would stick less to it. The texture of the surface microscope - its fineness or roughness on micrometer levels also affects the activity of water droplets - the scientists reported at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society of Fluids at Seattle, Washington.
If researchers adjust these properties to create effective beetle-inspired materials, engineers could design a water-collecting device for refugee tents to catch drops. water from the wind. Such materials can also be made into a bottle that can recharge itself from the air.
In some arid regions such as the edge of the Sahara desert in Morocco, residents have harvested fog for years. They use water nets into the pipes, transporting it back to the village. However, fog is still an elusive resource and even a slight increase in efficiency could benefit water-scarce communities.
Jonathan Boreyko, a mechanical engineer at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, said moving the research focus to how insects can collect a lot of mist is a good move. This aspect of the beetle water collection process has long been ignored, he noted. Boreyko said that beetle-inspired technologies would be useful outside the lab.
