Systematic Study on the Drag Reduction Performance of a Microstructure Inspired by Pufferfish

Due to the nature of migration, pufferfish has excellent underwater drag reduction ability. Apart from its streamline body, some studies showed that the microstructures on its body could also contribute to the drag reduction. In this work, the effects of the microstructure on the surface of pufferfish are numerically simulated. The microstructure features of the pufferfish surface are extracted and simplified. Orthogonal experiments on three levels of height, inclination and spacing of the microstructures are carried out. The simulation scheme and calculation results are verified. The results show that the height of microstructure is the main geometrical parameter affecting its drag reduction performance, and in a certain range, the drag reduction performance of the microstructure increases with the increase of height. The optimal combination of the microstructure for drag reduction is 0.05mm in height, 67.5° in inclination, 0.4mm in spacing.