Application of boundary element method to Stokes flows over a striped superhydrophobic surface with trapped gas bubbles

Abstract

A slow steady flow of a viscous fluid over a superhydrophobic surface with a periodic striped system of 2D rectangular microcavities is considered. The microcavities contain small gas bubbles on the curved surface of which the shear stress vanishes. The general case is analyzed when the bubble occupies only a part of the cavity, and the flow velocity far from the surface is directed at an arbitrary angle to the cavity edge. Due to the linearity of the Stokes flow problem, the solution is split into two parts, corresponding to the flows perpendicular and along the cavities. Two variants of a boundary element method are developed and used to construct numerical solutions on the scale of a single cavity with periodic boundary conditions. By averaging these solutions, the average slip velocity and the slip length tensor components are calculated over a wide range of variation of governing parameters for the cases of a shear-driven flow and a pressure-driven channel flow. For a sufficiently high pressure drop in a microchannel of finite length, the variation of the bubble surface shift into the cavities induced by the streamwise pressure variation is estimated from numerical calculations.