Stability and drag reduction in turbulent flow of skin with quasi-periodic elastic supports

Abstract

In order to reduce the flow resistance on the surface of ships, the skin with quasi-periodic elastic supports is designed based on the flexible skin drag reduction technology inspired by dolphin skin. In this paper, the stability characteristic equation of fluid-structure coupling system is established based on small perturbation theory and solved by MATLAB. The results indicate that the skin with quasi-periodic elastic supports has the ability of maintaining stability of turbulent boundary layer when the structural parameters are reasonable. In addition, the drag reduction performance of the skin with quasi-periodic elastic supports is studied by immersion boundary method. The analysis results demonstrate that the skin with quasi-periodic elastic supports can show better drag reduction performance than the skin with periodic elastic supports when the structural parameters q and the support spacing L are rationally set. In a certain speed range, the relative drag reduction rate is up to 72.16%. These optimal distribution parameter data of the skin under certain speed conditions obtained in this paper provide a reference for the practical application and intelligent optimization design of the skin with quasi-periodic elastic supports.