Numerical investigation of the effect of biomimetic tubercles on the hydrodynamic resistance of a flat plate

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Marino, Alessandro and Ravenna, Roberto and Terziev, Momchil and Atlar, Mehmet (2025) Numerical investigation of the effect of biomimetic tubercles on the hydrodynamic resistance of a flat plate. In: The 8th International Conference on Advanced Model Measurement Technology for the Maritime Industry (AMT’25), 2025-10-29 - 2025-10-31.

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Abstract

Mimicking the features of living animals or plants is often an efficient solution for engineering problems. In the marine world, humpback whales (Megaptera Novaeangliae) are well known for their remarkable agility, despite their bulky bodies, and biologists, as well as engineers, have studied them to uncover their secret. While the tubercles on the leading edge of their pectoral fins have been successfully applied to wing profiles in aeronautics [1, 2] and marine technology [3–5], the present work presents the application of the circular-base tubercles located on the head of these whales to a flat surface. In fact, the circular-base tubercles proved to be effective in manipulating the flow over the flat plate [6–8]and in some cases, also reduced the total drag. In the present study, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed in order to expand the investigation in [6] and replicate the experimental results obtained in [7, 8]. Simulations were run with both RANS and DES solvers, and the results were analysed and compared. The results confirmed the trend observed during the previous experimental campaign, showing that biomimetic tubercles can modify, and in some instances improve, the performance of a flat plate by reducing its drag.

ORCID iDs

Marino, Alessandro ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3042-927X, Ravenna, Roberto, Terziev, Momchil ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1664-6186 and Atlar, Mehmet ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4294-5945;
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