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Dogs’ noses could protect billions of air passengers each year thanks to a fascinating feature that engineers are investigating.
The concept is still in the very early “ideation phase,” according to Keir Boxshall, head of innovation at British engineering business Smiths Group. It stands a good chance of progressing, however, as the 167-year-old company’s renewed push for innovation has seen a 50% increase in its overall R&D spend for the past three years, with a further 20% rise planned for the next three.
One branch of the group, Smiths Detection, builds devices for detecting explosives and drugs, including the IonScan 600 and Trace-Pro. The machines send molecules from evaporated samples through electric fields. The time they take to travel through the field determines their size and helps identify substances.
With security such a high priority for border forces and airlines, there is a drive to improve devices. There are finite limits to how much the detection process can be miniaturised, however, so Smiths is investigating the potential offered by replicating natural systems.
Suction boosted
Dogs’ noses can contain up to 300m olfactory receptors – compared with 6m in humans – but the animals’ famous sense of smell is also aided by a physical feature. The ‘lead-in’ shape to a dog’s nostrils, with slits widening into circular holes, creates vortices that increase its suction power.
“It’s got loads of capillaries in its nose, so it breathes out hot air which excites the volatiles in the surface that it’s trying to sense. They become more ready to evaporate, and then it sniffs and it creates a conical vortex which sucks up,” said Boxshall. “So it’s actually sniffing a much bigger area than just the tiny area of its nose.”
Mimicking the shape of dogs’ noses could therefore help detection machines ‘inhale’ many more molecules, checking luggage for drugs or explosives more thoroughly. “We can make strides by adopting innovations and adaptations that nature has made,” said Boxshall.
Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.