Reducing Drag of Metal Objects through Water Using the Leidenfrost Effect

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of this research project was to investigate whether the Leidenfrost effect can be used to reduce the drag on a metal object traveling through a liquid. Methods/Materials A steel ball, which had its temperature adjusted to 13 degrees, 67 degrees, and 330 degrees Fahrenheit, was dropped down a cylinder filled with room temperature water. The drop time was recorded to determine whether the Leidenfrost effect can reduce the drag of the metal ball traveling through water. It was hypothesized that if a metal ball is cooled/heated to various temperatures (below and above the boiling point of water) and dropped down a cylinder filled with room temperature water, then the ball heated to above the boiling point of water will travel through the cylinder significantly faster than at the other two temperatures. Results The steel ball experienced the shortest average drop time of 0.612 seconds at 330 degrees Fahrenheit, followed by 0.657 seconds at 67 degrees Fahrenheit, and 0.663 seconds at 13 degrees Fahrenheit.A one-tailed paired t-test was used to analyze whether the average drop time was statistically different for each of the three temperature-specific data groups. The obtained p-value was much smaller than the assigned alpha value of 0.05 showing that the steel ball at 330 degrees Fahrenheit traveled significantly faster than at the other two temperatures. This supports the research hypothesis and rejects the null hypothesis. Conclusions/Discussion The results of this research can be used for new drag reduction technologies to reduce energy costs for a broad range of applications, such as in nautical applications, pipeline transport, and microfluidic devices.

Awards (1)

• Fourth Place

Competition history

• CSEF 2012 Aerodynamics/ Hydrodynamics (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0121

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Physics and Astronomy projects
• CSEF Physics and Astronomy projects
• Every CSEF 2012 project
• CSEF Fourth Place winners