Small Leidenfrost droplet dynamics

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed theoretical analysis of small Leidenfrost droplets, deriving formulas for forces and evaporation, and studying their dynamics and vaporization behavior, including take-off conditions and finite height vanishing.

Contribution

It introduces a rigorous numerical analysis of small Leidenfrost droplets, deriving fitting formulas and studying their dynamic behavior and evaporation-induced take-off.

Findings

Recovered the inverse-square root law for droplet height at take-off.

Identified deviations from the law due to evaporation effects.

Discovered that sufficiently large droplets vanish at a finite height depending on fluid properties.

Abstract

An isolated Leidenfrost droplet levitating over its own vapor above a superheated flat substrate is considered theoretically, the superheating for water being up to several hundred degrees above the boiling temperature. The focus is on the limit of small, practically spherical droplets of several tens of micrometers or less. This may occur when the liquid is sprayed over a hot substrate, or just be a late life stage of an initially large Leidenfrost droplet. A rigorous numerically-assisted analysis is carried out within verifiable assumptions such as quasi-stationarities and small Reynolds/P\'{e}clet numbers. It is considered that the droplet is surrounded by its pure vapor. Simple fitting formulas of our numerical data for the forces and evaporation rates are preliminarily obtained, all respecting the asymptotic behaviors (also investigated) in the limits of small and large levitation heights. They are subsequently used within a system of ODEs to study the droplet dynamics and take-off (drastic height increase as the droplet vaporizes). A previously known quasi-stationary inverse-square root law for the droplet height as a function of its radius (at the root of the take-off) is recovered, although we point out different prefactors in the two limits. Deviations of a dynamic nature therefrom are uncovered as the droplet radius further decreases due to evaporation, improving the agreement with experiment. Furthermore, we reveal that, if initially large enough, the droplets vanish at a universal finite height (just dependent on the superheat and fluid properties). Scalings in various distinguished cases are obtained in the way.