Polymers and plastrons : active and passive drag reduction in wall-bounded turbulent flows

Frictional energy dissipation in wall-bounded turbulence is ubiquitous in modern engineering systems, ranging from the flow of liquids through pipelines, to the drag-inducing boundary layer around ships and submarines. The effective mitigation of this frictional drag is therefore of great practical interest, and offers substantial economic and environmental benefits. This thesis focuses on two complementary techniques for turbulent drag reduction--the active injection of polymers into the flow, and the passive aerophilic texturing of the wall--and aims to address practical challenges that prevent their widespread adoption in real-life systems, with an emphasis on marine applications. The prohibitive cost of synthetic polymers remains a key impediment to their large-scale deployment in commercial marine operations.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Rajappan, Anoop.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gareth H. McKinley.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/131007

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/131007