Superhydrophobic Surfaces
An SEM image of a riblet surface I made.
A poster I presented at IMECE 2013.
An SEM image of a riblet surface I made.
Superhydrophobic Surfaces
2012-2013
As an undergraduate, I became involved with the Fluid and Thermal Transport Lab in BYU's ME Department. In the past couple of decades, a great deal of research had been done using various methods to determine the drag reduction characteristics of microrib surfaces. My initial research involved developing a way to compare all of this data. I presented a poster on this work at ASME IMECE 2013.
Following this work, I received an ORCA Grant to carry out my own project. In this project, I fabricated and tested the drag reduction capabilities of trapezoidal riblets. Fabrication included photolithographic techniques and resulted in 100+ hours of cleanroom experience. After fabrication I used an experimental setup developed by a former PHD student to test the surfaces. See the results in this report.