Recently in Germany, a group of researchers based a new helicopter design off of whales. The new rotors are based off of the bumps of the humpback whale's large fins. The bumps were shown to reduce drag, and cause stall later in water, so the researchers decided to scale the bumps to air, for helicopters.
When they tested the new blades in the wind tunnel, the results were well, so they test flew them on a helicopter. Since the flight went well, they are working on perfecting these new blades. They call them Leading Edge Vortex Generators.
Once the design is perfected, many existing helicopters will be able to have these installed, leading to better performance.
Information from Here
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