Mercedes fishes for inspiration

摘要

Mercedes has unveiled a biomimetic concept car which has a tropical fish to thank for its unusual shape. Engineers at Mercedes-Benz used the aerodynamic properties of the boxfish to design the 'bionic car'. The body of a boxfish is extremely streamlined, despite its boxy, cube-like shape. Using this as a starting-point, the engineers created a 1:4 clay model of the car. During wind-tunnel testing the model had a drag coefficient of just 0.095, which is the lowest ever measured in automotive engineering.