Toolmarks-Driven Surface Texture for Coating Attachment With Drag Reduction and Anti-Biofouling Performance

Abstract

Abstract Though modern mass production has the advantages of low production costs and high efficiency, it cannot meet the needs of low-volume production with the agile demand for point-of-need manufacturing. Here, we aim at the construction of the hull of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). UUVs provide safe and convenient solutions for underwater exploration, but the market and unique features of UUVs call for rapid digital manufacturing technologies. In this work, we propose a novel manufacturing method rooted in Double-Sided Incremental Forming (DSIF) for rapidly producing shell structures with riblet textures to aid drag reduction and anti-biofouling without the burden of specially designed tools or dies. First, a base hull structure is formed using the DSIF method. Then, the same setup is used for surface texturing with a different toolpath strategy utilizing the tool marks/textures on the surface for drag reduction. A coating based on Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS) technology is applied afterward to the textured surface. Finally, the drag coefficient and anti-biofouling performance are examined in experiments. Results show that with the combination of texture and SLIPS coating, the best drag reduction performance is achieved. The SLIPS coating is very effective in anti-biofouling and remains firmly attached to the surface under different flowing conditions. We anticipate that our method can be used in a broad range of functional shell structure applications with flexibility and cost efficiency.