Criterion for sliding / rolling characterization during droplet motion over superhydrophobic surfaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new non-dimensional 'Slip Reynolds' number to predict whether droplets will slide or roll on superhydrophobic surfaces, based on modeling and simulation of droplet motion.

Contribution

It proposes the first quantitative criterion, the 'Slip Reynolds' number, to characterize droplet sliding or rolling behavior on superhydrophobic surfaces.

Findings

The 'Slip Reynolds' number effectively predicts droplet behavior.

Simulations match experimental observations from literature.

The criterion helps in designing surfaces for desired droplet motion.

Abstract

Super hydrophobic surfaces have been the focus of research in the recent years.One of the reasons for this is the self cleaning property of these surfaces which emerges from the ability of the droplets to roll freely over them.However majority of the studies available in literature are on the static wetting behavior of liquid droplets on such surfaces and the physics of the motion of droplets has not been studied exhaustively either theoretically or experimentally.In the present study droplet motion on super hydrophobic surfaces has been modeled to analyze the sliding/ rolling characteristics of the droplet motion.A non-dimensional number is proposed to indicate whether a given droplet would tend to roll or slide more on a given super hydrophobic surface.We refer to this number as 'Slip Reynolds' number. Simulations of droplet motion were carried out with different surface and droplet characteristics leading to a unique value of this number corresponding to sliding/rolling behavior.The applicability of this number was tested with available experiments from literature.