Water droplets tend to bead up on rough or textured hydrophobic surfaces by trapping air on the crevices underneath resulting in “Cassie” state of wetting. When a textured hydrophobic surface is immersed in water, the resulting underwater “Cassie” state can lead to significant drag reduction. The entrapped air pockets act as shear free regions and the composite interface consisting of alternate no slip and no shear regions thus formed can deliver substantial drag reduction during flow. The magnitude of drag reduction depends not only on the fractional coverage of air on the surface, but also on the size of the air pockets, with larger sized air pockets facilitating larger drag reduction. It is a common observance that Lotus leaf when kept immersed in water for a few minutes loses its water repellency due to the loss of entrapped air on the surface. Underwater Cassie state on textured hydrophobic surfaces is also not sustainable because of the depletion of air pockets caused by the diffusion of trapped air into water. This causes the drag reduction to diminish with time. Rate of diffusion of air across the water–air interface depends on the concentration gradient of air across the interface. Under flow conditions, removal of entrapped air is further enhanced by convection, leading to more rapid shrinkage of the air pockets. In order to sustain the Cassie state, it is thus necessary to continuously supply air to these air pockets. In this work, we explore the possibility of supplying air to the cavities on the textured surface inside a microchannel by controlling the solubility of air in water close to the surface. The solubility is varied by i) Controlling the absolute pressure inside the channel and ii) Localized heating of the surface To trap uniform air pockets, a textured surface containing a regular array of blind holes is used. The textured surface is generated by photo etching of brass and is rendered hydrophobic through a self-assembled monolayer. The sustainability of the underwater Cassie state of wetting on the surface is studied at various flow conditions. The air trapped on the textured surface is visualized using total internal reflection based technique, with the pressure drop (or drag) being simultaneously measured. Water which is initially saturated with air at atmospheric conditions, when subjected to sub-atmospheric pressures within the channel becomes supersaturated causing the air bubbles to grow in size. Further growth causes the bubbles to merge and eventually detach from the surface. The growth and subsequent merging of the air bubbles leads to a substantial increase in the pressure drop because as the air pockets grow in size, they project into the flow and start obstructing the flow. On the other hand, a pressure above the atmospheric pressure within the channel makes the water undersaturated with air, leading to gradual shrinkage and eventual disappearance of air bubbles. In this case, the air bubbles do cause reduction in the pressure drop with the minimum pressure drop (or maximum drag reduction) occurring when the bubbles are flush with the surface. The rate of growth or decay of air bubbles is found to be significantly dependent on the absolute pressure in the channel. Hence by carefully controlling the absolute pressure, the Cassie state of wetting can be sustained for extended periods of time. A drag reduction of up to 15% was achieved and sustained for a period of over 5 hours. Temperature of water also influences the solubility of air in water with higher temperatures resulting in reduced solubility. Thus locally heating the textured hydrophobic surface causes the air bubbles to grow, with the rate of growth being dependent on the heat input. The effect of trapped air bubbles on thermal transport is also determined by measuring the heat transfer rate through the surface in the presence and absence of trapped air bubbles. Even though the trapped air bubbles do cause a reduction in the heat transfer coefficient by about 10%, a large pressure drop reduction of up to 15% obtained during the experiments helps in circumventing this disadvantage. Hence for the same pressure drop across the channel, the textured hydrophobic surface helps to augment the heat transfer rate. The experiments show that, by varying the solubility of air in water either by controlling the pressure or by local heating, underwater Cassie state of wetting can be sustained on textured hydrophobic surfaces, thus delivering up to 15% drag reduction in both cases for extended periods of time. The results obtained hold important implications towards achieving sustained drag reduction in microfluidic applications.

A super-hidrofobicidade é uma característica presente em diversas superfícies encontradas na natureza, conferindo-lhes determinadas características como a autolimpeza. Um dos mais conhecidos exemplos de superfície super-hidrofóbica autolimpante é a da folha de Lótus, que apresenta uma camada de retenção de ar importante entre as cavidades da superfície. Essa retenção de camada de ar entre cavidades é característica marcante de determinadas superfícies super-hidrofóbicas, e tem atraído grande atenção nos últimos anos, por ser de alto interesse tecnológico, econômico e ecológico. Algumas espécies apresentam superfície que retêm essa camada de ar por apenas algumas horas, ou dias. Em outras espécies, porém, ela se mantém por longos períodos. Uma das superfícies mais complexas é a da samambaia flutuante Salvinia, que é capaz de manter uma camada de ar estável durante várias semanas, mesmo quando submersa na água. Diversos estudos têm sido promovidos para fins de desenvolver tecnologias capazes de promover a retenção de ar na superfície por períodos longos, as quais têm grande potencial de aplicação no setor naval, por exemplo, pois serviriam para reduzir o arrasto hidrodinâmico quando utilizadas no revestimento de embarcações, diminuindo o consumo de combustível. Neste trabalho, buscou-se obter, através da mimetização da estrutura da Salvinia e suas espécies, uma superfície super-hidrofóbica retentora de camada de ar capaz de reduzir o arrasto hidrodinâmico. Desenvolveram-se, para tanto, revestimentos formados em duas etapas: uma base formada por fibras de poliamida para gerar rugosidade – aplicadas por flocagem eletroestática –, as quais foram cobertas, via spray, por um organosilano (hidrofóbico). Então, foram caracterizadas as propriedades dos revestimentos quanto à morfologia, ângulo de contato, ângulo de rolamento e volume de ar preso na superfície, bem como realizados testes para verificar sua capacidade de redução de arrasto hidrodinâmico. Os revestimentos super-hidrofóbicos desenvolvidos neste trabalho apresentaram camada de ar sobre a superfície e os testes demonstraram redução de arrasto hidrodinâmico de até 30%. / Super-hydrophobicity is a characteristic found in several surfaces of nature, which gives them certain features such as self-cleaning. One of the most well-known examples of a super-hydrophobic self-cleaning surface is the one present on the Lotus leaf, that contains an important layer of air retention between the cavities of the surface. This layer of air retention between cavities is a characteristic of some superhydrophobic surfaces, and has attracted a lot of attention recently, from technological, economic and ecological fields. Some species have a surface that holds this layer of air for only a few hours or days. Other species, however, maintain that for long periods of time. One of the most complex surfaces is the floating fern Salvinia - able to maintain a stable air layer for several weeks, even when submerged in water. Several studies have been carried out to develop technologies able to keep the air retention on surface for long periods, as they have a great potential to be applied in the naval sector, for instance, because they could reduce the hydrodynamic drag when used in the coating of boats, also reducing fuel consumption.The aim of this work is to obtain, by mimicking Salvinia’s structure and its species, a super-hydrophobic air-layer retaining surface, capable of reducing hydrodynamic drag. For this purpose, coatings composed in two stages were developed: a base composed by polyamide fibers to generate roughness - applied by electrostatic flocking - and covered by an organosilane (hydrophobic) spray. Then, the properties of the coatings were characterized in terms of morphology, angle of contact, rolling angle and volume of air hold on the surface, as well as tests to check their hydrodynamic drag reduction capacity. The super-hydrophobic coatings developed in this work have presented an air layer on surface and the tests has shown a hydrodynamic drag reduction for of up to 30%.