Design from Nature – 4
- POSTED ON: 26 May, 2017
- TOTAL VIEWS: 1576 Views
- POSTED BY: Chari Vijayaraghavan
- ARTICLE POINTS: 100 Points
This week we look at something that moves really fast – the bullet train! The Shinkansen bullet train in Japan can travel at over 320 kmph. Countries like Japan also have a restriction on noise levels apart from all the headache that you can get from going at high speeds.
When the train comes out of a tunnel, the air pressure is built up in waves and the nose emerging can produce a thunderclap heard from far away. In the 1990s, a bird-watcher and engineer Eiji Nakatsu, took inspiration from how the kingfisher smoothly darts into water to catch fish. He redesigned the nose of the train to resemble a 50 feet long steel kingfisher beak. It solved the noise problem, and also reduced the power consumption at greater speeds!
