Research On Biomimetic Preparation Based On Shell Surface Microstructure

Biofouling is a complex problem that can substantially impact ships’ performance if poorly controlled. Biofouling can significantly increase drag which has a deleterious impact on fuel consumption, speed and range and increases engine loads, leading to higher cleaning and maintenance costs and the potential translocation of invasive marine species. Development the environment friendly antifouling coating has become an tendency with increasingly strict of the emissions regulations. It was proved that material surface microtopography has significance influence on its antifouling property.5kinds of shells with different microstructure were taken as mimetic object in this study and choose different polymers to preparation biomimetic surface which has the same microstructure characteristic with the shells. Aims to lay the foundation for development new way of antifouling based on shell’s microstructure.In this study, Dosinia japonica, Gafrarium pectinatum, Mimachlamys nobilis, Cycline sinensis and Lioconcha fastigiana were taken as mimetic object and PDMS was used for female mould material, E44epoxy resin and polyurethane were used for male mould material respectively to get the bio-shells surface by means of vacuum prepolymer casting method.Three-dimensional surface profile measuring equipment was used to get the data of shells and bionic template’s surface morphology, in order to determine the accuracy of E44and PU surface, also to find the best suitable replica materials.Also, used Surface Roughness Average Sa, Root Mean Square Sq, Surface Kurtosis Sku, Peak-Peak Height Sy, The Ten Point Height Sz and Texture Direction Index Stdi to estimated the similarities between shell surface and biomimetic template surface. In addition, three dimensions surface shape appearance figure of measurements space were given.Analysis of results showed that the E44epoxy resin biomimetic surface characteristic is more close to original shell surface due to all of the relative error between the2kings of surface roughness parameters are below10%. Among PU biomimetic templates, Large difference exist in bottom of Dosinia japonica, Gafrarium pectinatum and Lioconcha fastigiana. Combined with microstructure figure found that there are400μm positional deviations in Gafrarium pectinatum and it’s PU replica. Meanwhile, tiny bubbles can’t be escaped from fine-grained female mould for a very short period of cure reaction time. Furthermore, polyurethane reaction heat would result in deformation of the elastomer PDMS female mold, so that the male mold surface morphology distortion after stripping and lead to relative errors were slightly larger of Dosinia japonica and Lioconcha fastigiana.