Effects of Asymmetric Cooling and Surface Wettability on the Orientation of the Freezing Tip

TL;DR

This study investigates how asymmetric cooling and surface wettability influence the orientation of the freezing tip in water droplets on polymer wedges, combining experimental observations with computational modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approximate computational model that accounts for variable freezing front area and explains the asymmetric freezing behavior observed experimentally.

Findings

Faster freezing on bare surfaces compared to superhydrophobic ones.

The freezing tip orientation is governed by local heat flux direction.

Experimental and numerical results show consistent freezing dynamics.

Abstract

Freezing of water droplets placed on the bare and superhydrophobic surfaces of polymer wedges are studied both experimentally and computationally. Two-dimensional numerical calculations of the transient temperature field in a chilled polymer wedge show that the direction of heat flux from the droplet through the thermal contact region with the wedge differs significantly from the normal to the wedge surface. This is the physical cause of the recently observed asymmetric cooling of the droplet. A novel approximate computational model is proposed that takes into account the variable area of the water freezing front in the droplet. This model gives a quantitative estimate of the faster freezing of the droplet on the bare surface. The obtained numerical results agree with the data of laboratory experiments. The velocity of the crystallization front and the droplet deformation including the so-called freezing tip formation are monitored in the experiment. The direction of the freezing cone axis appears to be noticeably different for the cases of bare and superhydrophobic wedge surfaces. This deviation is explained by the fact that the direction of the freezing cone axis is controlled by the local direction of the heat flux. For a hydrophobic wedge surface, the deviation of the freezing tip from the vertical is smaller, because the reduced thermal contact area reduces the influence of the heat flux direction at the wedge surface.