The great hammerhead is denser than water, and hence relies on hydrodynamic lift to compensate for its lack of buoyancy, and on hydrodynamic moment to compensate for a possible misalignment between centres of mass and buoyancy. Because hydrodynamic forces scale with the swimming speed squared, whereas buoyancy and gravity are independent of it, there is a critical speed below which the shark cannot generate enough lift to counteract gravity, and there are anterior and posterior centre-of-mass limits beyond which the shark cannot generate enough pitching moment to counteract the buoyancy–gravity couple. The speed and centre-of-mass limits were found from numerous wind-tunnel experiments on a scaled model of the shark. In particular, it was shown that the margin between the anterior and posterior centre-of-mass limits is a few tenths of the product between the length of the shark and the ratio between its weight in and out of water; a diminutive 1% body length. The paper presents the wind-tunnel experiments, and discusses the roles that the cephalofoil and the pectoral and caudal fins play in longitudinal balance of a shark.

大锤头比水更密，因此依靠流体动力升力来弥补其浮力的不足，并依靠流体动力力矩来弥补质心和浮力之间可能的不对准。因为水动力与游泳速度的平方成正比，而浮力和重力却不受其影响，所以存在一个临界速度，低于这个临界速度鲨鱼就无法产生足够的升力来抵消重力，并且存在一个前后的质心极限，超过这个极限鲨鱼无法产生足够的俯仰力矩来抵消浮力-重力耦合。在鲨鱼的比例模型上的大量风洞实验中发现了速度和质心极限。尤其是，结果表明，前后质量中心界限之间的距离是鲨鱼的长度与入水和出水重量之比的十分之一。身高1％的身材矮小。本文介绍了风洞实验，并讨论了头叶以及胸鳍和尾鳍在鲨鱼纵向平衡中的作用。