Collaborative Research: Passive Laminar Flow Control via Phononic Subsurfaces

NSF Award Search · 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $316,858 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Reducing the fuel consumption of sea and air vehicles by lowering their drag could have significant economic and environmental benefits. One way to reduce drag is to maintain laminar flow of the water or air over the entirety of the vehicle surface, which for modern ships and aircraft is normally turbulent. Laminar flow causes significantly less friction than turbulent flow, which reduces drag. Methods for laminar flow control have had limited success because most either (i) involve an active device that requires energy input, (ii) are effective only in a particular range of flow conditions, or both. This project will apply a new technology to maintain laminar flow called Phononic subsurfaces (PSubs), which are architected material units placed beneath the vehicle surface engineered to passively impede the growth of flow instabilities that lead to turbulence. The project will also sponsor a computational education workshop and an art education component to train visual artists to represent physical phenomena in an engaging way for the public. Previous computation-based studies have demonstrated that properly designed PSubs can locally suppress linear instability. However, current methods lack a unified approach to eliminate the growth of perturbations downstream of the control region while also handling such perturbations over a broad-frequency range and when incident from varying directions. Furthermore, the PSub concept has not yet been experimentally validated. This pro

Key facts

NSF award ID
2528770
Awardee
University of Colorado at Boulder (CO)
SAM.gov UEI
SPVKK1RC2MZ3
PI
Mahmoud I Hussein
Primary program
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
Estimated total
$316,858
Funds obligated
$316,858
Transaction type
Standard Grant
Period
07/01/2025 → 06/30/2028