Influence of slip on the flow past superhydrophobic circular cylinders

Superhydrophobic surfaces have been shown to produce significant drag reduction for both laminar and turbulent flows of water through large- and small-scale channels. In this paper, a series of experiments were performed which investigated the effect of superhydrophobic-induced slip on the flow past a circular cylinder. In these experiments, circular cylinders were coated with a series of superhydrophobic surfaces fabricated from polydimethylsiloxane with well-defined micron-sized patterns of surface roughness. The presence of the superhydrophobic surface was found to have a significant effect on the vortex shedding dynamics in the wake of the circular cylinder. When compared to a smooth, no-slip cylinder, cylinders coated with superhydrophobic surfaces were found to delay the onset of vortex shedding and increase the length of the recirculation region in the wake of the cylinder. For superhydrophobic surfaces with ridges aligned in the flow direction, the separation point was found to move further upstream towards the front stagnation point of the cylinder and the vortex shedding frequency was found to increase. For superhydrophobic surfaces with ridges running normal to the flow direction, the separation point and shedding frequency trends were reversed. Thus, in this paper we demonstrate that vortex shedding dynamics is very sensitive to changes of feature spacing, size and orientation along superhydrophobic surfaces.