We investigate the deformation of a linear viscoelastic compliant coating in a turbulent flow for a wide range of coating parameters. A one-way coupling model is proposed in which the turbulent surface stresses are expressed as a sum of streamwise-travelling waves with amplitudes determined from the stress spectra of the corresponding flow over a rigid wall. The analytically calculated coating deformation is analysed in terms of the root-mean-square (r.m.s.) surface displacement and the corresponding point frequency spectra. The present study systematically investigates the influence of five coating properties namely density, stiffness, thickness, viscoelasticity and compressibility. The surface displacements increase linearly with the fluid/solid density ratio. They are linearly proportional to the coating thickness for thin coatings, while they become independent of the thickness for thick coatings. Very soft coatings show resonant behaviour, but the displacement for stiffer coatings is proportional to the inverse of the shear modulus. The viscoelastic loss angle has only a significant influence when resonances occur in the coating response, while Poisson’s ratio has a minor effect for most cases. The modelled surface displacement is qualitatively compared with recent measurements on the deformation of three different coatings in a turbulent boundary-layer flow. The model predicts the order of magnitude of the surface displacement, and it captures the increase of the coating displacement with the Reynolds number and the coating softness. Finally, we propose a scaling that collapses all the experimental data for the r.m.s. of the vertical surface displacement onto a single curve.

The manufacture and preliminary testing of a drag-reducing riblet texture with fouling-control properties is presented. The commercial fouling-release product Intersleek® 1100SR was modified to manufacture riblet-textured coatings with an embossing technology. Hydrodynamic drag measurements in a Taylor-Couette set-up showed that the modified Intersleek® riblets reduced drag by up to 6% compared to a smooth surface. Barnacle settlement assays demonstrated that the riblets did not substantially reduce the ability of Intersleek® 1100SR to prevent fouling by cyprids of Balanus amphitrite. Diatom adhesion tests revealed significantly higher diatom attachment on the riblet surface compared to smooth Intersleek® 1100SR. However, after exposure to flow, the final cell density was similar to the smooth surface. Statically immersed panels in natural seawater showed an increase of biofilm cover due to the riblets. However, the release of semi-natural biofilms grown in a multi-species biofilm culturing reactor was largely unaffected by the presence of a riblet texture.

A bird-feather-inspired herringbone riblet texture was investigated for turbulent drag reduction. The texture consists of blade riblets in a converging/diverging or herringbone pattern with spanwise wavelength f . The aim is to quantify the drag change for this texture as compared to a smooth wall and to study the underlying mechanisms. To that purpose, direct numerical simulations of turbulent flow in a channel with height L z were performed. The FukagataIwamoto-Kasagi identity for drag decomposition was extended to textured walls and was used to study the drag change mechanisms. For f /L z ࣡ O(10), the herringbone texture behaves similarly to a conventional parallel-riblet texture in yaw: the suppression of turbulent advective transport results in a slight drag reduction of 2%. For, the drag increases strongly with a maximum of 73%. This is attributed to enhanced mean and turbulent advection, which results from the strong secondary flow that forms over regions of riblet convergence/divergence. Hence, the employment of convergent/divergent riblets in the texture seems to be detrimental to turbulent drag reduction.

We present an analytical study of oscillatory laminar shear flow over a compliant viscoelastic layer on a rigid base. This problem relates to oscillating blood flow in viscoelastic vessels. The deeper motivation for this study, however, is the possible use of compliant coatings for turbulent drag reduction. An analytical solution of the fluid and solid velocity is presented, and five dimensionless parameters emerge. The interaction between fluid and solid appears to be determined by a single combined dimensionless parameter, which we call the shear interaction parameter χ. The fluid satisfies a no-slip boundary condition when |χ| → 0, which occurs when the solid is heavy, stiff and/or thin. In contrast, the fluid obeys a free-slip boundary condition when |χ| → ∞, which corresponds to a lightweight and/or soft solid. Three types of resonance modes are identified for an elastic solid. Two modes (odd and even) are specific to the solid. The third mode results from the coupling with the fluid. The three modes are less pronounced or even absent for a viscoelastic solid. These findings have a twofold use. First, they help to understand the fluid and solid dynamics when shear coupling is important. Second, the presented analytical solution is very useful for validation of numerical fluid-structure-interaction solvers. Future work might include the extension of the theory to multiple viscoelastic layers and the dynamic coupling of normal stresses.

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