We investigate the dynamic effects of a Leidenfrost vapour layer sustained on the surface of heated steel spheres during free fall in water. We find that a stable vapour layer sustained on the textured superhydrophobic surface of spheres falling through 95 °C water can reduce the hydrodynamic drag by up to 75% and stabilize the sphere trajectory for the Reynolds number between 10(4) and 10(6), ...

The remarkable ability of polymeric additives to reduce the level of frictional drag significantly in turbulent flow, even under extremely low dilutions, is known as turbulent drag-reduction behavior. Several bio-polymers have been assessed as promising drag-reducing agents for the potential replacement of high molecular weight synthetic polymers to improve safety and ameliorate environmental c...

We investigate experimentally the hydrodynamics of a hairy disk immersed in a two-dimensional flowing soap film. Drag force is measured as a function of hair length, density, and coating area. An optimum combination of these parameters yields a drag reduction of 17%, which confirms previous numerical predictions (15%). Flow visualization indicates the primary mechanism for drag reduction is the...

Waves of spanwise velocity imposed at the walls of a plane turbulent channel flow are studied by Direct Numerical Simulations. We consider sinusoidal waves of spanwise velocity which vary in time and are modulated in space along the streamwise direction. The phase speed may be null, positive or negative, so that the waves may be either stationary or traveling forward or backward in the directio...

We describe here the first example of the synthesis of 4-arm star poly(acrylic acid) for use as a water-soluble drag reducing agent, by applying Cu(0)-mediated polymerization technique. High molecular weight 4-arm star poly(tert-butyl acrylate) (Mn = 3.0-9.0 x 10 5 g mol -1 ) was first synthesized using 4,4’-oxybis(3,3-bis(2-bromopropionate)butane as an initiator and a simple Cu(0)/TREN catalys...

Efflux time measurements are carried out for gravity draining of a liquid from a large cylindrical tank (where the flow is essentially laminar) through single exit pipe in the absence and presence of Cetyl Pyridinium Chloride (CPC) surfactant solutions. The variables considered are initial height of liquid in the tank, dia. of tank, length of the exit pipe and concentration of surfactant. T...

Nonlinear traveling waves that are precursors to laminar-turbulent transition and capture the main structures of the turbulent buffer layer have recently been found to exist in all the canonical parallel flow geometries. We study the effect of polymer additives on these “exact coherent states” (ECS), in the plane Poiseuille geometry. Many key aspects of the turbulent drag reduction phenomenon a...

Progress in understanding turbulent drag reduction by polymer additives has recently been made on several fronts. The near-wall dynamics of Newtonian turbulence is becoming better understood. Detailed computations of complex flows of model polymer solutions are now possible. Insights into the effects of viscoelasticity have been gained from a number of important model flows, and the understandi...

Turbulent drag reduction in wall-bounded flows is investigated experimentally by considering the dynamic effects provoked by large variation of anisotropy in the velocity fluctuations. It is shown that high drag reduction is obtained when the velocity fluctuations near the wall reach the statistically axisymmetric state with invariance under rotation about the axis aligned with the mean flow. D...