Drag reduction in fluid flows using the concept of a super hydrophobic surface has recently gained attentions from several researchers. The hydrophobic surfaces developed are inspired by the non-wetting properties of a lotus leaf. They find several applications in areas like, self-cleaning surfaces, mixing in laminar flows and others.
In this paper, computational studies were done for isothermal pure water along with the focus in the surface optimization. Different possible geometries are investigated with the use of commercial computational fluid dynamics code. Parametric study on the geometrical variations of the surface is the main discussion of the current paper, as well as their effects on the wetting. Some of the geometrical variations are the square, rectangular, and isosceles triangular groove surfaces. The drag reduction was found to increase by increasing the roughness spacing and decreasing the roughness height irrespective of the type of the surface geometry.
