Nanosecond laser high-precision fabrication of microgrooves on TC4 surface: Morphology simulation and drag reduction performance of microgrooves

With the increasing global awareness of environmental protection, higher requirements are also placed on the fuel consumption rate of aircraft. Microgrooves can reduce the near-wall frictional resistance of aircraft to save fuel, which has become the focus of research in the aviation industry. To realize the low-cost and high-precision fabrication of microgrooves with drag reduction effect, an efficient and high-precision numerical simulation method for nanosecond pulsed laser etching TC4 titanium alloy is studied. A laser processing strategy is formulated. Furthermore, an efficient and high-precision computational fluid dynamics simulation method is studied to verify the drag reduction effect of microgrooves. The research results show that the size error of prepared microgrooves is less than 2%, and their drag reduction rate is as high as 9.6%, which verifies the validity and reliability of the research method in this paper. This work can guide the design of high-density functional microstructures and their high-efficiency and high-precision fabrication. The research results can provide technical parameters for aircraft drag reduction, which has essential engineering practical value.