A Study to Compare the Fouling Resistance and Self-cleaning Properties of Two-patterned Surfaces with an Un-patterned Control Surface

Biofouling is an unwelcomed phenomenon where unwanted biological matter adheres to surfaces with the presence of water, resulting in alteration to the properties of the surface. This affects many industries, especially the marine industry. Multiple biofouling control studies have been conducted to minimize damage and maintenance cost of these surfaces. With rising concerns on the toxicity of current control methods towards the environment, non-toxic methods shown to be effective are surface modifications such as self-cleaning or biomimetic textured surfaces. One of the biomimetic surfaces, shark’s skin has shown anti-fouling properties due to its surface riblets with low drag properties based on studies done. However, few researches are conducted to implement these biomimetic surface topographies for real anti-fouling applications. Therefore, this project explores the possibilities in implementing biomimetic surface topographies such as shark’s skin in real life applications using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and also to manufacture these surfaces using 3D printing methods. A computer-aided design (CAD) model of shark skin and un-patterned surface topographies are used to study the behavior of fluid over these surfaces in CFD fluent in ANSYS software. The hydrodynamic variable data such as wall shear stress over the surface topography is represented in a contour and vector plot, these results are then analyzed. According to the hypotheses, the biomimetic shark skin surface topography will show higher wall shear stress, indicating anti-fouling properties. In the next part of this project is the manufacturing of these surface, the goal is to provide a cheaper alternative to current micro-structured surface production methods such as photolithography. Additive manufacturing such as fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing can potentially provide a manufacturing method with a much lower cost and time needed. Thus, 3D printing of the biomimetic shark skin surface topography will be carried out in this project to determine if FDM can provide a manufacturing solution to anti-fouling micro-topography surfaces.