Thermodynamic analysis of shark skin texture surfaces for microchannel flow

Abstract

The studies of shark skin textured surfaces in flow drag reduction provide inspiration to researchers overcoming technical challenges from actual production application. In this paper, three kinds of infinite parallel plate flow models with microstructure inspired by shark skin were established, namely blade model, wedge model and the smooth model, according to cross-sectional shape of microstructure. Simulation was carried out by using FLUENT, which simplified the computation process associated with direct numeric simulations. To get the best performance from simulation results, shear-stress transport k-omega turbulence model was chosen during the simulation. Since drag reduction mechanism is generally discussed from kinetics point of view, which cannot interpret the cause of these losses directly, a drag reduction rate was established based on the second law of thermodynamics. Considering abrasion and fabrication precision in practical applications, three kinds of abraded geometry models were constructed and tested, and the ideal microstructure was found to achieve best performance suited to manufacturing production on the basis of drag reduction rate. It was also believed that bionic shark skin surfaces with mechanical abrasion may draw more attention from industrial designers and gain wide applications with drag-reducing characteristics.