DNS of turbulent flows over superhydrophobic surfaces: effect of texture randomness

Superhydrophobic surfaces (SHS) are non-wetting surfaces consisting of hydrophobic material and nano/micro-scale structures. When in contact with overlaying liquid flows, such structures can entrap gas and therefore suppress the direct contact between water and solid, reducing skin friction. SHS patterns can utilize a wide range of geometries including posts, ridges, and etched holes, either in a pre-specified arrangement or randomly distributed. In this work we investigate how the randomness of such patterns affect the drag reduction and interfacial robustness when these surfaces are under turbulent flows. We perform direct numerical simulations of turbulent flows over randomly patterned slip surface on a wide range of texture parameters. We present slip lengths of randomly distributed SHS for texture widths $w^{\mathrm{+\thinspace }}=$ 4 $-$ 26, and solid fractions from 11{\%} to 25{\%}. For fixed gas fraction and texture size, the slip lengths of randomly distributed textures are less than those of aligned textures. We show that the geometric randomness of texture distribution weakens the interfacial robustness of the gas pocket. Support from Office of Naval Research (ONR) under grant {\#}3002451214 is gratefully acknowledged.