Droplet impact and splitting behaviour on superhydrophobic wedges

TL;DR

This study combines experiments and simulations to analyze how droplet impact and splitting behavior on superhydrophobic wedges depend on wedge geometry and fluid forces, revealing key influences on spreading and breakup dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive computational and experimental analysis of droplet impact on superhydrophobic wedges, including the effects of wedge angle, asymmetry, Weber, and Bond numbers, with detailed energy budget insights.

Findings

Maximum spread decreases with wedge angle at fixed Weber number.

Asymmetric wedges show increased maximum spreading with Weber and Bond numbers.

Good agreement between 2D simulations and experiments for most of the droplet lifetime.

Abstract

We report an extensive computational and experimental investigation of droplet impact and subsequent splitting hydrodynamics on superhydrophobic wedges. 2D and necessary 3D simulations using the volume of fluid method, backed with experimentations, have been performed to predict the droplet impact, spreading, split up, retraction against sliding, and daughter droplet lift off events from the SH wedge. In particular, we examine how the wedge angle , wedge asymmetry , Weber number and normalized Bond number influence the post-impact dynamics. We observe that for symmetric wedges, the maximum spread factor of the droplet decreases with an increase in wedge angle at a fixed We. At high wedge angles, the sharp steepness of the wedge causes less contact area for the droplet to spread. For the asymmetric wedges, it has been noted that beta max increases with an increase in the We due to the higher inertial forces of the droplet against sliding. Furthermore, the increases with an increase in Bo at a fixed We due to the dominance of the gravitational force over the capillary force of the droplet. It has been also found that at the same Bo, the increases with an increase in We due to the dominance of inertial forces over the capillary forces. The split volume of daughter droplets during the split up stage for different symmetric and asymmetric wedge angles has been discussed. In general, our 2D simulations agree well with the experiments for a major part of the droplet lifetime. Further, we have conducted a detailed 3D simulation based energy budget analysis to estimate the temporal evolution of the various energy components at different post impact hydrodynamic regimes.