There is a story about how the modern golf ball, with its dimpled（带酒窝的） surface, came to be: In the mid-1800s, it is said, new golf balls were smooth, but became dimpled over time as impacts left permanent dents¹（压痕）. Smooth new balls were typically used for tournament play, but in one match, a player ran short, had to use an old, dented² one, and realized that he could drive this dimpled ball much further than a smooth one. Whether that story is true or not, testing over the years has proved that a golf ball's irregular surface really does dramatically increase the distance it travels, because it can cut the drag caused by air resistance in half. Now researchers at MIT are aiming to harness that same effect to reduce drag on a variety of surfaces -- including domes³ that sometimes crumple⁴ in high winds, or perhaps even vehicles.

 

Detailed⁵ studies of aerodynamics（气体力学） have shown that while a ball with a dimpled surface has half the drag of a smooth one at lower speeds, at higher speeds that advantage reverses. So the ideal would be a surface whose smoothness can be altered, literally⁶, on the fly -- and that's what the MIT team has developed.

 

The new work is described in a paper in the journal Advanced Materials by MIT's Pedro Reis and former MIT postdocs Denis Terwagne (now at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium) and Miha Brojan (now at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia).

 

The ability to change the surface in real time comes from the use of a multilayer material with a stiff skin and a soft interior -- the same basic configuration⁷ that causes smooth plums to dry into wrinkly（有皱纹的） prunes⁸. To mimic⁹ that process, Reis and his team made a hollow ball of soft material with a stiff skin -- with both layers made of rubberlike materials -- then extracted air from the hollow interior to make the ball shrink and its surface wrinkle.

 

"Numerous studies of wrinkling have been done on flat surfaces," says Reis, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering. "Less is known about what happens when you curve the surface. How does that affect the whole wrinkling process?"

 

The answer, it turns out, is that at a certain degree of shrinkage, the surface can produce a dimpled pattern that's very similar to that of a golf ball -- and with the same aerodynamic properties.

 

The aerodynamic properties of dimpled balls can be a bit counterintuitive: One might expect that a ball with a smooth surface would sail through the air more easily than one with an irregular surface. The reason for the opposite result has to do with the nature of a small layer of the air next to the surface of the ball. The irregular surface, it turns out, holds the airflow close to the ball's surface longer, delaying the separation of this boundary layer. This reduces the size of the wake -- the zone of turbulence¹⁰ behind the ball -- which is the primary cause of drag for blunt（钝的） objects.

 

When the researchers saw the wrinkled outcomes of their initial tests with their multilayer spheres, "We realized that these samples look just like golf balls," Reis says. "We systematically¹¹ tested them in a wind tunnel, and we saw a reduction in drag very similar to that of golf balls."

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