Surfers Intrigued By MIT Engineers Developing Beaver-Inspired Wetsuit Technology

Image: Felice Frankel

MIT engineers, in collaboration with the biology of beavers, have dreamt up a hairy wetsuit concept designed to keep surfers drier and more agile.

Inspiration for the idea came when members of MIT’s STE@M (Sports Technology and Education at MIT) program traveled to Taiwan. The group, led by MIT Associate Head of Engineering Operations Anette Hosoi, visited numerous sporting goods manufacturers, one being wetsuit producer Sheico Group, according to a story published on MIT News.

Sheico Group inquired about a sustainable wetsuit option that emphasized shedding water quickly and staying warm, Hosoi said.

Hosoi suggested her team of engineers look to nature to solve the problem. “We started looking at animals that are small and agile, but have to survive in arctic environments and spend part of their time underwater and part of their time on land,” Hosoi said in a video for MIT News.

Semiaquatic mammals, like beavers and otters, are covered by two separate layers of insulating fur that help them survive in cold wet conditions. MIT graduate student Alice Nasto headed the project that went about replicating this naturally occurring phenomenon using soft casting rubber and laser cutting technology. The final product was a thin rubbery pelt covered with tiny synthetic hairs. 

Nasto and her team confirmed that the weight of water against a beaver’s outer fur forced air in, but water stopped short. This process created a natural insulating barrier, Nasto said. “The water sticks to these hairs, which prevents water from penetrating all the way to their base.”

The STE@M team took its findings a step further and developed an equation predicting how thick an air barrier would result from hair layers of different lengths and densities, Hosoi said. “We have now quantified the design space and can say, ‘If you have this kind of hair density and length, and are diving at these speeds, these designs will trap air, and these will not.’ Which is the information you need if you’re going to design a wetsuit.”

Hosoi has already received messages from surfers eager to get their hands on the new wetsuit technology, according to a report on Outside..

Outdoors retail juggernaut Patagonia is also keeping tabs on the potential innovation. “It’s super interesting,” Patagonia’s wetsuit designer Hub Hubbard told Outside. “Our innovation team has played around with bio-mimicry on other projects, and I think there’s potential with this kind of thing. Whether they can make a suit that can withstand the turbulence of being in surf is the real question. I’m really hopeful it works out.”