Nature inspires design for all fluid-moving machinery

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What is common in all above pictures? Spirals!
PAX Scientific CEO Jay Harman is the first person to isolate the geometries that underlie natural flow and adapt those geometries to technology. From his observations, he asked a simple question: “If fluids always tend to follow a particular path, is there a way to design equipment that takes advantage of this fact?”

Cameron Burns from Rocky Mountain Institute wrote in 2002 that “Pax’s impeller design is based on a logarithmic spiral known as a Phi Ratio or Fibonacci Sequence that occurs in many places in nature, yet few designers have ever mimicked them. When rotated in water or air, the impeller makes the fluid flow smoothly in a vortex, like water exiting a bathtub. In contrast, the most common kinds of conventional pumps and fans sling the fluid outward and bounce it off a curved wall to make some of it move in the desired direction.”

PAX Impeller could revolutionise fluid-moving machinery like pumps, fans, propellers, mixers, and turbines.

Now based in the US, Australian Scientist Jay Harman, CEO of PAX Scientific is designing new fan technology that claims to have energy savings of 50%, and be around 75% quieter compared to fans, impellers and propellers using traditional shapes and designs. Harman had his moment of inspiration when he was 10-years-old, swimming off the coast in Western Australia. Like almost every young Australian he wanted to swim faster, so he watched how fish moved through water and how seaweed moved against the reef when a wave crashed. He noticed that kelp moved in the shape of a spiral to withstand the force of the waves and noticed spirals as a common design pattern in nature.

Until Harman’s work, no one had used this natural design shape for fans, impellers or propellers, even though it is used widely to reduce friction for air and water flows in nature.

Check this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by0JhirtO-0