Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2019
The hydrodynamic quantification of superhydrophobic slipperiness has traditionally employed two canonical problems – namely, shear flow about a single surface and pressure-driven channel flow. We here advocate the use of a new class of canonical problems, defined by the motion of a superhydrophobic particle through an otherwise quiescent liquid. In these problems the superhydrophobic effect is naturally measured by the enhancement of the Stokes mobility relative to the corresponding mobility of a homogeneous particle. We focus upon what may be the simplest problem in that class – the rotation of an infinite circular cylinder whose boundary is periodically decorated by a finite number of infinite grooves – with the goal of calculating the rotational mobility (velocity-to-torque ratio). The associated two-dimensional flow problem is defined by two geometric parameters – namely, the number $N$ of grooves and the solid fraction
$\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$. Using matched asymptotic expansions we analyse the large-
$N$ limit, seeking the mobility enhancement from the respective homogeneous-cylinder mobility value. We thus find the two-term approximation,
$$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle 1+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{N}}\ln \csc {\displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}}{2}}, & & \displaystyle \nonumber\end{eqnarray}$$
$N=1,2,4,8,\ldots$. We conjecture that it is exact for all
$N$.