Lead-flapping objects experience less wind resistance than their trailing co...( It is commonly known that racing car...)

It is commonly known that racing cars and bicyclists can reduce air resistance by following closely behind a leader, but researchers from New York University and Cornell University have found the opposite is true with flapping objects, such as flags. Their study, published in the most recent issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, discovered that in a series of flags, the leading flag faces significantly less resistance than do succeeding flags. The finding may alter our understanding of how living flapping creatures, such as birds or fish, move through the air and water.

"Inspired by schooling fish and flocking birds, we studied how flapping flags alter fluid drag forces, or resistance that moving objects face, on one another when grouped together," said Jun Zhang, an associate professor in NYU's Physics Department and its Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and a co-author of the study. "To our surprise, we discovered that the leading flag enjoys a drag reduction of up to 50 percent while its downstream neighbor suffers a significant drag increase. If this effect applies to fish schools and bird flocks, the leaders would also have a reduced burden and spend less energy as they swim or fly."

The finding is the first of its kind on fluid flow. All previous studies on rigid objects in a moving fluid show the exact opposite result: the leading object must overcome greater drag forces than the followers.

"Our finding is thus a dramatic violation of our common sense about fluids and structures," Zhang explained.

In the study, the researchers sought to simulate flags flying under windy conditions by inserting flexible filaments ("the flag") to a wire ("the flagpole"). To model wind, they placed the model flag into a flowing soap film. Because the filaments are flexible and massive, they spontaneously flap under the fluid, reacting as flags would in a natural breeze.

Under different flow conditions, Z
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