Drag reduction study of a microfiber-coated cylinder

Mitsugu Hasegawa; Yi-Chung Chen; Hirotaka Sakaue

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-19302-5

Drag reduction study of a microfiber-coated cylinder

Sci Rep. 2022 Sep 2;12(1):15022. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-19302-5.

Authors

Mitsugu Hasegawa¹, Yi-Chung Chen¹, Hirotaka Sakaue²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA.
² Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA. hsakaue@nd.edu.

Abstract

Drag reduction for a bluff body is imperative in a time of increasing awareness of the environmental impact and sustainability of air travel. Microfiber coating has demonstrated its ability to reduce drag on a bluff body. This was done by applying strips of the coating to a cylinder. To widen the application range of the microfiber coating, a fully microfiber-coated cylinder is studied as it has no directionality relative to incoming flow. It is hypothesized that a large coating coverage will cause a reduction in drag dependent on the Reynolds number Re. The fully microfiber-coated cylinder is studied in a wind tunnel and the drag coefficient is determined at a range of Re in the subcritical-flow regime. It is found that the drag coefficient of the microfiber-coated cylinder is a function of Re, and the critical Reynolds number, where the maximum drag reduction occurs, is lower for a microfiber-coated cylinder compared to that of a conventional smooth-surface cylinder.