Have you been wondering what those swimmers have been wearing at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games? Me too! If only because of all the discussions about the fairness of using technology in sports and how many of the new world records are due to the suit and not the swimmer. But what is the technology behind Speedo‘s swimwear and is it really that much of an advantage? What is clear is that with its price tag, not all kids dreaming of becoming olympic swimmers can afford it, especially those from developing countries. But then this debate should be touching almost all sports, not only swimming, because technology is used in many of them, from carbon fibre bikes to running shoes. But let’s take a closer look at our suspect, the Fastskin LZR Racer suit produced by Speedo and then you can decide by yourselves.
What is it?
Although it is creating a bit of upheaval right now, the LZR Racer is just the last suit in a series that started in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with the S200 swimsuits. In the table below you’ll appreciate that Speedo has launched a new model for every Olympic game since then:
All suits have evolved to reduce drag, hence facilitating faster swimming. The LZR Racer counts with the following features:
- LZR Pulse: This is one of the core features of the suit: its fabric. Speedo is a bit secretive about the details, but I don’t blame them! We do know that the fabric is made of woven nylon and spandex. In this model the flexibility of the fabric has been improved, making it more confortable to wear.
- LZR Panels: These are thin pannels embedded at certain points of the suit to achieve a more aerodynamical shape. An interesting article in Design News tells us that they are made of “a new low-drag, water repellent polyurethane membrane”. It’s a multilayer material, i.e. several layers of PU are laminated together.
- Bonded seams: First, Speedo reduced the number of seams by decreasing the number of pieces from 30 to 3. Previous models have stitches to join the different parts, with 22 stitches per inch that gave resistance to the seams. The resulting parts of the LZR Racer still need to be bonded in the new suit have a 3D shape and were joint by ultrasonic welding, obtaining a smoother surface. Ultrasonic welding had been used in sports equipment in the past, but it had to be fine tuned to swimsuits’ requirements.
- Core stabilizers: Acting as a supportive corset, it helps swimmers maintain a correct body position.
How was it designed?
One of the main principles of design is to know well your product and its user. Nowadays there are many tools that enable constant feedback from users to designers. I would love to write a post about how web 2.0 services are improving that communication by means of networks, blogs and wikis. Speedo is familiar with this principle and it seems to form a symbiosis with its swimmers. Their input in the design of the suit is considered critical by Speedo, but swimmers are also walking publicity for the brand.
Together with Aqualab, Speedo’s development department, collaborated with some institutions and research labs for this swimsuit:
- NASA: wind tunnels used to test surface drag of 60 types of fabric in order to select LZR Pulse
- University of Otago, New Zealand: Water flume testing assessed passive drag
- Australia Institute of Sport: Performance factor testing, i.e. live testing with swimmers
- ANSYS: Computational fluid dynamics to evaluate friction, pressure and fluid flow. You can find an interesting article about how Fluent, now belonging to ANSYS, developed previous models here
The main design aspects for the suit have therefore been aerodynamics, friction and usability. The materials were selected after a long process considering 60 fabrics. This on its own has probably turn Speedo’s designers into materials experts! Pity they won’t share their results, so that other applications could benefit from so much testing.
Conclusion
I don’t know to you, but to me this design plan sounds like one for a car, a boat or a plane, deffinetely not a piece of clothing. The result is obvious, the swimsuit does give an advantage to swimmers, no matter how you look at it. Do we think this is fair or sports-like? That’s really up to you decide, but I do think that training and competing with this suit is not the same as without it and for certain nations participating in the Olympics, the price tag makes it prohibited. We also have to wonder if all this research, ingenuity and knowledge couldn’t be put to more important uses that swimsuits.
