Numerical simulation on structural microscale riblet surfaces of internal pipelines to enhance fluid transportation

This thesis aims to investigate the effects of structural microscale riblet surfaces on fluid transportation through internal pipelines with respect to the viscous frictional losses at the pipe walls. Application of patterned living nature structural morphology can prevent the occurrence of turbulent effect in fluid flow. It is known that by applying microscale riblet surfaces, through biomimicry of shark skin, wall gecko’s foot, lotus leaves, etc., turns the classical no-slip wall boundary conditions into slip wall boundary conditions. In view of understanding drag reduction mechanism, the Navier-stokes equation needs to be solved and analyzed over riblet surfaces using one of the computational turbulent flow model. Researchers have reported an average drag reduction of approximately 20% through mimicking riblet patterns in internal flow surface. Microscale riblet surfaces can limit fluid viscous drag and reduce pressure drop in turbulent flow through internal pipelines for improved fluid transportation. As an add-on to previous research works, this study focused on building four pipe models: two smooth pipe surfaces and two riblet pipe surfaces. The models used were 2-D and 3-D smooth surfaces, and two 2-D riblet surfaces. Circular geometry of 40 mm diameter by 1 m length was employed with numerical simulation of turbulent flow using commercially available Computational Fluid Dynamic CFD package