Numerical Simulations for Turbulent Drag Reduction Using Liquid Infused Surfaces

Numerical simulations of the turbulent flow over Super Hydrophobic and Liquid Infused Surfaces have been performed in this work. Three different textured surfaces have been considered: longitudinal square bars, transversal square bars and staggered cubes. The numerical code combines an immersed boundary method to mimic the substrate and a level set method to track the interface. Liquid Infused Surfaces reduce the drag by locking a lubricant within structured roughness to facilitate a slip velocity at the surface interface. The conceptual idea is similar to Super Hydrophobic Surfaces, which rely on a lubricant air layer, whereas liquid-infused surfaces use a preferentially wetting liquid lubricant to create a fluid-fluid interface. This slipping interface has been shown to be an effective method of passively reducing skin friction drag in turbulent flows.

Details are given on the effect of the viscosity ratio between the two fluids and the dynamics of the interface on drag reduction. An attempt has been made to reconcile Super-Hydrophobic, Liquid Infused and rough wall under the same framework by correlating the drag to the wall normal velocity fluctuations.