ABSTRACT
X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) is a powerful tool to measure the 3D features at the micron scale. X-ray micro-CT measures a lot of cross sections of a specimen in microscale resolution. The data of tomography obtained by X-ray micro-CT contains inner structure information of denticles, but only surface morphology is necessary for 3D fluid simulations. A 3D morphology was obtained by X-ray micro-CT and revealed rising flows and longitudinal vortexes near the denticles. These flow features are generated by a slope and asymmetric groove structures. The impeller is rotated with a rotor at several ten thousand revolutions per minute. The rotating impeller makes the swirl flow. The biomimetic design (BMD) structure is located on the tip of the vane, and the riblet structure covers the rest of the whole surface. The BMD and riblet structures were confirmed to be successfully fabricated, so the diffusers with these fabricated vanes were assembled as a BMD diffuser.
