CFD analysis of effects on fluid flow resistance of metallic wavy structures

Microscale wrinkles can be utilized to enhance the characteristics of products. For example, a shark skin having riblet surface can move faster underwater, minimizing fluid flow resistance. We introduce a novel approach to fabricate microscale metallic wrinkles using a soft lithography and electroforming process; we also evaluated the effects of wrinkles by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses. For the generation of metallic wrinkles, a UV-curable resin, NOA68T was used to fabricate a master wrinkling pattern by mechanism of compressive forces on a skin of the weakly polymerized resin layer. The master pattern was molded and replicated as metallic wrinkles on a surface via soft lithography and electroforming processes. To understand the advantages of a wavy surface on reduction of flow resistance, we carried out two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) CFD analyses. The drag coefficient of a wrinkled 2D square model was decreased about 17.1 %, and a 3D real wrinkle model showed 4.9 to 7.3 % reduction of it compared to without wrinkle models. We believe that it is possible to reduce the fluid flow resistance using wavy surfaces that can easily be generated selectively or wholly on an arbitrary surface.