Design and construct a micro beehive shape hydrophobic device with a rapid prototyping technique

Abstract

We present a hydrophobic device with a hexagonal beehive micro structure for the ship drag reduction and the surface self-cleaning functions. The device was fabricated by the micro-molding technique. Since the device material is nylon, and coated with parylene, the devices can be assembled into large surface area of different arcs. Thus the ship surfaces could be attached by those devices to reduce the wave resistance. The contact angles of the different size micro structures were measured to characterize the surface hydrophobicity. The water tunnel experiments were conducted to obtain the dragging data on the assembled devices' surface. With the same structure, more than 35% drag reduction rate could be achieved in turbulent flow at High Reynolds Number through low surface energy treatment. Due to the low cost advantages of the rapid prototyping technique, the polymer beehive hydrophobic device has a wide application expectation in the ship drag reduction, the self-cleaning, and the pipeline transportation.