What do you do when your research and development team hit a home run…and then a governing body outlaw your technology?  That’s what happened to Speedo. Their LZR Racer suits dominated the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Then FINA banned the full-body suits, restricting males to the swim jammers.

Faced with a restriction on amount of material on a swimsuit, Speedo decided focus on the other two pieces of equipment swimmers use – the cap and goggles.  Their FASTSKIN3 is positioned as a complete racing system. The Speedo R&D team, together with ANSYS, performed several tests.

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From GizMag:

Rather than specify a standard suit, or possibly special materials from which a suit must be made for international competition, FINA decided to limit the portion of the body that could be covered. For men, this was from the waist to the knees, and for women, from the shoulder to the knee. Their intent was to prevent the design of performance-enhancing suits such as the Speedo LZR Racer, but the restriction was so narrow that it simply required that a different optimization process be carried out.

The result is Speedo’s Fastskin3 Racing System. When worn as a complete system of suit, cap, and goggles, passive drag, which impedes gliding while submerged, is reduced by up to 16.6 percent, and the amount of oxygen needed by the swimmer at a given speed is reduced by up to ten percent. Finally, active body drag, resulting from the waves that the swimmer creates, the swimmer’s constantly changing shape and the force of the water passing over the body’s surface, is reduced by as much as 5.2 percent.

Development of the racing system relied on expanded multiphysics simulations that included both fluid dynamics and structural mechanics. For example, the shape of the cap was optimized for low drag and turbulence, as were the effect of using a range of materials and construction techniques to insure that the caps will withstand the stresses of competitive swimming.

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