Assessment of aerodynamic roughness parameters of turbulent boundary layers over barnacle-covered surfaces

Full-scale drag penalty predictions of flows over rough walls require surface roughness characterisation from laboratory experiments or numerical simulations. In either approach, it is necessary to determine the so-called equivalent sand-grain roughness height (\(k_s\)). There are several steps involved in determining this aerodynamic roughness lengthscale, but its procedure typically includes a combination of measurement of wall-shear stress (\(\tau _w\)) using direct or indirect methods as well as analysis of velocity profiles. Indirect methods usually rely on assumptions made about flow and its scaling including the validity of universal outer-layer similarity. However, the implications of the underlying assumptions involved in full-scale drag prediction are unclear. In this work, we carry out wind tunnel measurements over a realistic rough surface (from a fouled ship-hull) to evaluate the impact of different methods with an emphasis on using the outer-layer similarity hypothesis for full-scale drag predictions. Wall-shear stress is measured using an in-house floating-element drag balance (DB), and velocity profiles are obtained using particle image velocimetry (PIV), allowing the evaluation of \(k_s\), and the associated wake parameters through several methods. The aerodynamic roughness parameters hence obtained are used for full-scale drag penalty calculations. It is observed that the predicted drag penalty can vary by over 15\(\%\) among the different methods highlighting the care that should be taken when employing such methods.