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A revolutionary new swimsuit developed in collaboration with scientists at The University of Nottingham has helped to propel a Notts swimmer to an historic Olympic gold medal. Rebecca Adlington, of Mansfield, was wearing the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit when she became Britain’s first female Olympic swimming champion in 48 years after winning the women’s 400m freestyle in Beijing. Bronze medal-winning teammate Jo Jackson was also sporting the cutting-edge suit, which was developed by Speedo AQUALAB, in collaboration with Nottingham experts in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) — the computer modelling of fluid flow. The Nottingham team used CFD to investigate drag reduction by positioning low friction fabric in key locations and streamlining the swimmer to help them optimise their hydrodynamic performance. It’s not only Team GB who are benefiting from using the suit. It has helped keep US double gold-winner Michael Phelps on target for eight Olympic titles. In a recent interview the Baltimore Bullet told the BBC that he was very excited about the prospect of racing in the suit. “I felt like a rocket right when I hit the water,” he said. Since its launch in February, more than 50 world records have been set by swimmers wearing the Speedo LZR Racer. To create a level playing field for all competing swimmers, Speedo has been directed by the sports governing body FINA to make the suits available to every athlete competing at the Olympics. As a result, the company took more than 3,000 of the suits to Beijing and have had more than 100 swimmers at a time queuing to be fitted out. Speedo harnessed the expertise of NASA and a number of international research institutes and industrial partners such as ANSYS, one of the world’s leading engineering simulation software providers, to create the new suit. Dr Herve Morvan, a lecturer in the School of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, is working as Speedo's AQUALAB CFD advisor. The team at Nottingham specialises in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the computer modelling of fluid flow. The technique is rapidly developing in its technology and applications and can cut design times, increase productivity and give significant insight to fluid flows. CFD is commonly used for analysis, for example, in the Rolls Royce University Technology Centre which specialises in research for the aeronautics industry, and for many other applications relating to the energy, biomedical and sports sectors. As well as engineers, experts in the School of Mathematical Sciences and the School of Physics and Astronomy develop and use numerical modelling techniques of fluid flow to provide insight in fluid problems ranging from the atomic scale to that of the universe. Speedo AQUALAB scanned over 400 athletes and obtained the scan for a series of top athletes. Using CFD analysis Dr Morvan and his team were able to pin-point areas of high friction on the athlete’s body. With this information designers were able to position low friction fabric, exclusively developed by Speedo, in the right locations. Dr Morvan said: “CFD enabled us to use the compressive property of the suit to shape the body as ideally as possible, taking into account the physiological and bio-mechanical requirements of the athlete.” The new suit has 5 per cent less drag than Speedo’s 2007 suit, the FS Pro, which saw swimmers break 21 world records. Analysis by Dr Morvan and his team at The University of Nottingham was carried out in collaboration with flume work at the University of Otago, in New Zealand and fabric tests by NASA. Dr Morvan who is now working with Speedo towards the 2012 Olympics in London said: “We are now building up toward active drag which accounts for the athlete motion and its interaction with the free surface. This should further validate the suit design as we move to the 2012 Olympics.”