At impact of a liquid droplet on a smooth surface heated above the liquid's boiling point, the droplet either immediately boils when it contacts the surfaces (``contact boiling''), or without any surface contact forms a Leidenfrost vapor layer towards the hot surface and bounces back (``gentle film boiling''), or both forms the Leidenfrost layer and ejects tiny droplets upward (``spraying film boiling''). We experimentally determine conditions under which impact behaviors in each regime can be realized. We show that the dimensionless maximum spreading $γ$ of impacting droplets on the heated surfaces in both gentle and spraying film boiling regimes shows a universal scaling with the Weber number $\We$ ($γ\sim\We^{2/5}$) -- regardless of surface temperature and of liquid properties -- which is much steeper than for the impact on non-heated (hydrophilic or hydrophobic) surfaces ($γ\sim\We^{1/4}$). We also intereferometrically measure the vapor thickness under the droplet.
This fluid dynamics video depicts the evaporation of sessile water droplets placed on heated superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces of varying cavity fraction, F_c, and surface temperature, T_s, above the saturation temperature, T_sat. Images were captured at 10,000 FPS and are played back at 30 FPS in this video. Teflon-coated silicon surfaces of F_c = 0, 0.5, 0.8, and 0.95 were used for these experiments. T_s ranging from 110°C to 210°C were studied. The video clips show how the boiling behavior of sessile droplets is altered with changes in surface microstructure. Quantitative results from heat tra…
Drops of water at room temperature were released in hot oil, which had a temperature higher than that of the boiling point of water. Initially, the drop temperature increases slowly mainly due to heat transfer diffusion; convective heat transfer is small because the motion takes place at a small Reynolds number. Once the drop reaches the bottom of the container, it sticks to the surface with a certain contact angle. Then, a part of the drop vaporizes: the nucleation point may appear at the wall, the interface or the bulk of the drop. The vapor expands inside the drop and deforms its interface.…
In real applications, drops always impact on solid walls with various inclinations. For the oblique impact of a Leidenfrost drop, which has a vapor layer under its bottom surface to prevent its direct contact with the superheated substrate, the drop can nearly frictionlessly slide along the substrate accompanied by the spreading and the retracting. To individually study these processes, we experimentally observe ethanol drops impact on superheated inclined substrates using high-speed imaging from two different views synchronously. We first study the dynamic Leidenfrost temperature, which mainl…
When a volatile drop impacts on a superheated solid, air drainage and vapor generation conspire to create an intermediate gas layer that delays or even prevents contact between the liquid and the solid. In this article, we use high-speed synchronized reflection interference and total internal reflection imaging to measure the short-time dynamics of the intermediate gas film and to probe the transition between levitation and contact. We observe that the substrate temperature strongly affects the vertical position of the liquid-gas interface and that the dynamic Leidenfrost transition is influen…
Calculations are presented to describe the dynamic of a growing bubble in a single and simple formulation for R(t). The calculations show clearly that the behavior of the growing bubble is exponentially increasing with the time constant τ showing a universal behavior as a function of the reduced superheat. Experimental data from other researchers are used to verify the description and are in good agreement with the results. The main motivation for this study was to find R(t)that is accurate and at the same time uncomplicated enough in solving the dynamic of the bubble growth to calculate the f…
Manipulating surface topography is one of the most promising strategies for increasing the efficiency of numerous industrial processes involving droplet contact with superheated surfaces. In such scenarios, the droplets may immediately boil upon contact, splash and boil, or could levitate on their own vapor in the Leidenfrost state. In this work, we report the outcomes of water droplets coming in gentle contact with designed nano/micro-textured surfaces at a wide range of temperatures as observed using high-speed optical and X-ray imaging. We report a paradoxical increase in the Leidenfrost te…
The depressurization of the surrounding chamber or superheating of the injected liquid is responsible for the flashing of the sprays, which promotes micro-explosion of many bubbles near free-surface and thereby leading to primary atomization of sprays. In this work, we propose a mathematical model, and the Dirichlet hyperboloids are used to explain the micro-explosion process while the external flashing phenomenon is observed in superheated liquid jets. The developed mathematical model is implemented in the Lagrangian framework to study the spray structure, and the results of numerical simulat…
The Leidenfrost effect-prolonged evaporation of droplets on a superheated surface-happens only when the surface temperature is above a certain transitional value. Here, we show that specially engineered droplets - liquid marbles - can exhibit similar effect at any superheated temperatures (up to 465 oC tested in our experiment) without a transition. Very possibly, this phenomenon is due to the fact that liquid marbles are droplets coated with microparticles and these microparticles help levitate the liquid core and maintain an insulation layer between the liquid and the superheated surface.
Droplets can be levitated by their own vapour when placed onto a superheated plate (the Leidenfrost effect). It is less known that the Leidenfrost effect can likewise be observed over a liquid pool (superheated with respect to the drop), which is the study case here. Emphasis is placed on an asymptotic analysis in the limit of small evaporation numbers, which proves to be a realistic one indeed for not so small drops. The global shapes are found to resemble "superhydrophobic drops" that follow from the equilibrium between capillarity and gravity. However, the morphology of the thin vapour laye…
The gasification of multicomponent fuel drops is relevant in various energy-related technologies. An interesting phenomenon associated with this process is the self-induced explosion of the drop, producing a multitude of smaller secondary droplets, which promotes overall fuel atomization and, consequently, improves the combustion efficiency and reduces emissions of liquid-fueled engines. Here, we study a unique explosive gasification process of a tricomponent droplet consisting of water, ethanol, and oil ("ouzo"), by high-speed monitoring of the entire gasification event taking place in the we…
Modelling the sudden depressurisation of superheated liquids through nozzles is a challenge because the pressure drop causes rapid flash boiling of the liquid. The resulting jet usually demonstrates a wide range of structures, including ligaments and droplets, due to both mechanical and thermodynamic effects. As the simulation comprises increasingly numerous phenomena, the computational cost begins to increase. One way to moderate the additional cost is to use machine learning surrogacy for specific elements of the calculations. The present study presents a machine learning-assisted computatio…
Droplets impacting on a superheated surface can either exhibit a contact boiling regime, in which they make direct contact with the surface and boil violently, or a film boiling regime, in which they remain separated from the surface by their own vapor. The transition from the contact to the film boiling regime depends not only on the temperature of the surface and kinetic energy of the droplet, but also on the size of the structures fabricated on the surface. Here we experimentally show that surfaces covered with carbon-nanofibers delay the transition to film boiling to much higher temperatur…
Leidenfrost droplets: The roles of ambient humidity and internal droplet circulation
University of Twente（特温特大学）；Max-Planck Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics（马普中心特温特复杂流体力学）；J.M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics（J.M. 伯格斯流体力学中心）；University of Houston（休斯顿大学）；Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization（马普动力学与自组织研究所）
The levitation of a volatile droplet on a highly superheated surface is known as the Leidenfrost effect. Wetting state during transition from full wetting of a surface by a droplet at room temperature to Leidenfrost bouncing, i.e., zero-wetting at high superheating, is not fully understood. Here, visualizations of droplet thermal and wetting footprint in the Leidenfrost transition state are presented using two optical techniques: mid-infrared thermography and wetting sensitive total internal reflection imaging under carefully selected experimental conditions, impact Weber number < 10 and dropl…
The impact and splash of liquid drops on solid substrates are ubiquitous in many important fields. However, previous studies have mainly focused on spherical drops while the non-spherical situations, such as raindrops, charged drops, oscillating drops, and drops affected by electromagnetic field, remain largely unexplored. Using ferrofluid, we realize various drop shapes and illustrate the fundamental role of shape in impact and splash. Experiments show that different drop shapes produce large variations in spreading dynamics, splash onset, and splash amount. However, underlying all these vari…
It is generally accepted that the Worthington jet occurs when a droplet impacts onto a liquid pool. However, in this experimental study of the impact of viscous droplets onto a less-viscous liquid pool, we identify another jet besides the Worthington jet, forming a two-jet phenomenon. The two jets, a surface-climbing jet and the Worthington jet, may appear successively during one impact event. By carefully tuning the impact condition, we find that the two-jet phenomenon is jointly controlled by the droplet-pool viscosity ratio, the droplet Weber number, and the droplet-pool miscibility. The me…
In nature, high-speed rain drops often impact and spread on curved surfaces e.g. tree leaves. Although a drop impact on a surface is a traditional topic for industrial applications, drop-impact dynamics on curved surfaces in natural situations are less known about. In the present study, we examine the time-dependent spreading dynamics of a drop onto a curved hydrophobic surface. We also observed that a drop on a curved surface is spreads farther than one on a flat surface. To understand the spreading dynamics, a new analytical model is developed based on volume conservation and temporal energy…
We investigate the dynamics of drop impacts on dry solid surfaces. By synchronising high-speed photography with fast force sensing, we simultaneously measure the temporal evolution of the shape and impact force of impacting drops over a wide range of Reynolds numbers (Re). At high Re, when inertia dominates the impact processes, we show that the early-time evolution of impact force follows a square-root scaling, quantitatively agreeing with a recent self-similar theory. This observation provides direct experimental evidence on the existence of upward propagating self-similar pressure fields du…
Hot liquid metal drops impacting onto a cold substrate solidify during their subsequent spreading. Here we experimentally study the influence of solidification on the outcome of an impact event. Liquid tin drops are impacted onto sapphire substrates of varying temperature. The impact is visualised both from the side and from below, which provides a unique view on the solidification process. During spreading an intriguing pattern of radial ligaments rapidly solidifies from the centre of the drop. This pattern determines the late-time morphology of the splat. A quantitative analysis of the drop …
This is a fluid dynamics video illustrating the impact of ferrofluidic droplets on surfaces of variable wettability. Surfaces studied include mica, teflon, and superhydrophobic. A magnet is placed beneath each surface, which modifies the behavior of the ferrofluid by applying additional downward force apart from gravity resulting in reduced droplet size and increased droplet velocity. For the superhydrophobic droplet a jetting phenomena is shown which only occurs in a limited range of impact speeds, higher than observed before, followed by amplified oscillation due to magnetic field as the dro…
The impact of droplets on an inclined falling liquid film is studied experimentally using high-speed imaging. The falling film is created on a flat substrate with controllable thicknesses and flow rates. Droplets with different sizes and speeds are used to study the impact process under various Ohnesorge and Weber numbers, and film Reynolds numbers. A number of phenomena associated with droplet impact are identified and analysed, such as bouncing, partial coalescence, total coalescence, and splashing. The effects of droplet size, speed, as well the film flow rate are studied culminating in the…
We simulate the impact of a viscous liquid drop onto a smooth dry solid surface. As in experiments, when ambient air effects are negligible, impact flattens the falling drop without producing a splash. The no-slip boundary condition at the wall produces a boundary layer inside the liquid. Later, the flattening surface of the drop traces out the boundary layer. As a result, the eventual shape of the drop is a "pancake" of uniform thickness except at the rim, where surface tension effects are significant. The thickness of the pancake is simply the height where the drop surface first collides wit…
Textured hydrophobic surfaces that repel liquid droplets unidirectionally are found in nature such as butterfly wings and ryegrass leaves and are also essential in technological processes such as self-cleaning and anti-icing. However, droplet impact on such surfaces is not fully understood. Here, we study, using a high-speed camera, droplet impact on surfaces with inclined micropillars. We observed directional rebound at high impact speeds on surfaces with dense arrays of pillars. We attribute this asymmetry to the difference in wetting behavior of the structure sidewalls, causing slower retra…
Oblique impact of drops onto a solid or liquid surface is frequently observed in nature. Most studies on drop impact and splashing, however, focus on perpendicular impact. Here, we study oblique impact of 100-micrometer drops onto a deep liquid pool, where we quantify the splashing threshold, maximum cavity dimensions and cavity collapse by high-speed imaging above and below the water surface. Gravity can be neglected in these experiments. Three different impact regimes are identified: smooth deposition onto the pool, splashing in the direction of impact only, and splashing in all directions. …
In microfluidic technologies, direct patterning of liquid without resorting to micromachined solid structures has various advantages including reduction of the frictional dissipation and the fabrication cost. This fluid dynamics video illustrates the method to micropattern a liquid on a solid surface with drop impact. We experimentally show that a water drop impacting with the wettability-patterned solid retracts fast on the hydrophobic regions while being arrested on the hydrophilic areas.
Colliding drops are widely encountered in everyday technologies and natural processes, from combustion engines and commodity sprays to raindrops and cloud formation. The outcome of a collision depends on many factors, including the impact velocity and the degree of head-on alignment, in addition to intrinsic properties like surface tension. Yet little is known on the binary impact dynamics of low surface tension oil drops on a low-wetting surface. We experimentally and numerically investigate the dynamics of an oil drop impacting an identical sessile drop sitting on a superamphiphobic surface.…
Droplets at the air-liquid interface of immiscible liquids usually form partially-submerged lens shapes (e.g. water on oil). In addition to this structure, we showed that droplets released from critical heights above the target liquid can sustain the impact and at the end maintain a spherical ball-shape configuration above the surface, despite undergoing large deformation. Spherical drops are unstable and will transform into the lens mode due to slight disturbances. Precision dispensing needles with various tip diameter sizes were used to release pendant drops of deionized water onto the surfa…
We experimentally investigate the effect of freezing on the spreading of a water drop. Whenever a water drop impacts a cold surface, whose temperature is lower than 0°C, a thin layer of ice grows during the spreading. This freezing has a notable effect on the impact: at given Reynolds and Weber numbers, we show that lowering the surface temperature reduces the drop maximal extent. Using an analogy between this ice layer and the viscous boundary layer, which also grows during the spreading, we are able to model the effect of freezing as an effective viscosity. The scaling laws designed for visc…
The impact of a laser pulse on a highly absorbing liquid drop can lead to a violent response: the drop is accelerated, strongly deforms, and eventually fragments. Shock waves, the ejection of matter, and even plasma formation can accompany this process ...
The splashing of a drop impacting onto a liquid pool produces a range of different sized micro-droplets. At high impact velocities, the most significant source of these droplets is a thin liquid jet emerging at the start of the impact from the neck that connects the drop to the pool. We use ultra-high-speed video imaging in combination with high-resolution numerical simulations to show how the ejecta gives way to irregular splashing. At higher Reynolds number, its base becomes unstable, shedding vortex rings into the liquid from the free surface in an axisymmetric von Kármán vortex street, thu…
Droplet impact on solid surfaces is a fluid phenomenon widely involved in additive manufacturing, heat management, and coating, in which the ability to exert control over the impact dynamics and duration is critical. While past studies have established a comprehensive understanding of the impact on flat substrates, what we know about the impact dynamics on curved solid surfaces is still limited. This work aims to elucidate the physics of droplet impact on spherical surfaces with different Weber numbers ($We$), radii ($R_s$), and surface wettability ($θ^{eq}$) using a combination of axisymmetri…
We study the impact and subsequent retraction dynamics of liquid droplets upon high-speed impact on hydrophobic surfaces. Performing extensive experiments, we show that the drop retraction rate is a material constant and does not depend on the impact velocity. We show that when increasing the Ohnesorge number, $\Oh=η/\sqrt{ρR_{\rm I} γ}$, the retraction, i.e. dewetting, dynamics crosses over from a capillaro-inertial regime to a capillaro-viscous regime. We rationalize the experimental observations by a simple but robust semi-quantitative model for the solid-liquid contact line dynamics inspir…
The energy budget and dissipation mechanisms during droplet impact on solid surfaces are studied numerically and theoretically. We find that for high impact velocities and negligible surface friction at the solid surface (i.e. free-slip), about one half of the initial kinetic energy is transformed into surface energy, independent of the impact parameters and the detailed energy loss mechanism(s). We argue that this seemingly universal rule is related to the deformation mode of the droplet and is reminiscent of pipe flow undergoing a sudden expansion, for which the head loss can be calculated b…
We report on experiments of drop impacting a hydrophobic micro-grid, of typical spacing a few tens of $μ$m. Above a threshold in impact speed, liquid emerges to the other side, forming micro-droplets of size about that of the grid holes. We propose a method to produce either a mono-disperse spray or a single tiny droplet of volume as small as a few picoliters corresponding to a volume division of the liquid drop by a factor of up to 10$^5$. We also discuss the discrepancy of the measured thresholds with that predicted by a balance between inertia and capillarity.
We study drop impacts on immiscible viscous liquid pool and investigate the formation of droplet surface craters using experimental and theoretical analysis. We attribute the formation of air craters to the rapid deceleration of the droplet due to viscous drag force. The droplet response to the external impulsive decelerating force induces oscillatory modes on the surface exposed to the air forming capillary waves that superimpose to form air craters of various shapes and sizes. We introduce a non-dimensional parameter ($Γ$), that is, the ratio of drag force to the capillary force acting on th…
This study experimentally explores fluid breakup and Leidenfrost dynamics for droplets impacting a heated millimetric post. Using high-speed optical and infrared imaging, we investigate the droplet lifetime, breakup and boiling modes, as well as the cooling performance of different substrates. The post substrate leads to a shorter droplet lifetime and a 20°C higher Leidenfrost temperature compared to a flat substrate, attributed to mixed boiling modes along the height of the post and additional pinning. For temperatures below the Leidenfrost point, in the nucleate boiling regime, the post subs…
Vertical drop impacts of ferrofluids onto glass slides in a non-uniform magnetic field have been studied using high-speed photography. Outcomes have been classified based on the motion of the fluid-surface contact lines, and formation of peaks (Rosensweig instabilities) which affect the height of the spreading drop. The largest peaks are nucleated at the edge of a spreading drop, similarly to crown-rim instabilities in drop impacts with conventional fluids, and remain there for an extended time. Impact Weber numbers ranged from 18.0 to 489, and the vertical component of the B-field was varied …
We investigate the impact velocity beyond which the ejection of smaller droplets from the main droplet (splashing) occurs for droplets impacting a smooth surface. We examine its dependence on the surface wetting properties and droplet surface tension. We show that the splashing velocity is independent of the wetting properties of the surface, but increases roughly linearly with increasing surface tension of the liquid. A preexisting splashing model is considered that predicts the splashing velocity by incorporating the air viscosity. The model is consistent with our data, but the calculation i…
We numerically investigate bouncing and non-bouncing of droplets during isothermal impact on superhydrophobic surfaces. An in-house, experimentally-validated, finite-element method based computational model is employed to simulate the droplet impact dynamics and transient fluid flow within the droplet. The liquid-gas interface is tracked accurately in Lagrangian framework with dynamic wetting boundary condition at three-phase contact line. The interplay of kinetic, surface and gravitational energies is investigated via systematic variation of impact velocity and equilibrium contact angle. The …
For a limited set of impact conditions, a drop impacting onto a pool can entrap an air bubble as large as its own size. The subsequent rise and rupture of this large bubble plays an important role in aerosol formation and gas transport at the air-sea interface. The large bubble is formed when the impact crater closes up near the pool surface and is known to occur only for drops which are prolate at impact. Herein we use experiments and numerical simulations to show that a concentrated vortex ring, produced in the neck between the drop and pool, controls the crater deformations and pinch-off. H…
The impact of liquid drops on a heated solid surface is of great importance in many engineering applications. This paper describes the simulation of the drop-wall interaction using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The SPH method is a Lagrangian mesh-free method that can be used to solve the fluid equations. A vaporization model based on the SPH formulation was also developed and implemented. A parametric study was conducted to characterize the effects of impact velocity and wall temperature on the impact outcome. The present numerical method was able to predict different outco…
Drop impacts on solid and liquid surfaces exhibit complex dynamics due to the competition of inertial, viscous, and capillary forces. After impact, a liquid lamella develops and expands radially, and under certain conditions, the outer rim breaks up into an irregular arrangement of filaments and secondary droplets. We show experimentally that the lamella expansion and subsequent break up of the outer rim can be controlled by length scales that are of comparable dimension to the impacting drop diameter. Under identical impact parameters, ie. fluid properties and impact velocity, we observe uniq…
The internal dynamics during the coalescence of a sessile droplet and a subsequently deposited impacting droplet, with either identical or distinct surface tension, is studied experimentally in the regime where surface tension is dominant. Two color high-speed cameras are used to capture the rapid internal flows and associated mixing from both side and bottom views simultaneously by adding an inert dye to the impacting droplet. Given sufficient lateral separation between droplets of identical surface tension, a robust surface jet is identified on top of the coalesced droplet. Image processing …
Universal mapping of drop impact spreading from wetting to Leidenfrost regimes
Institute of Thermal Science and Power Systems, School of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University（浙江大学能源工程学院热科学和动力系统工程研究所）；Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University（普林斯顿大学机械与航空航天工程系）；State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Zhejiang University（浙江大学清洁能源利用国家重点实验室）
Before a droplet can contact a surface during impact, it must first displace the air beneath it. Over a wide range of impact velocities, the air is compressed into a thin film, slowing the progress of the liquid toward the surface. Below a critical impact velocity, the air film remains intact; the droplet rebounds off of the air film without making contact. Above this critical impact velocity, the droplet always makes contact. The initiation of contact formation occurs via a topological transition, whereby the initially connected gas domain is ruptured, and a liquid capillary bridge forms, bin…
Deformation of liquid droplets by impingement induces Worthington jet in certain range of the impact velocity. Although the growth of the jet as well as its tip velocity is predicted from similar cases to the droplet impact, the mechanism of the jet generation is yet to be understood. In this study, high-speed visualization of the droplet impact on a superhydrophobic surface was conducted to understand the initiation of the jet generated by a collapse of an air cavity. Water droplets whose diameter are 2.0 mm and 3.0 mm were generated and the Weber number of the droplet was varied in a range o…
A drop impacting on a solid surface deforms before the liquid makes contact with the surface. We directly measure the time evolution of the air layer profile under the droplet using high-speed color interferometry, obtaining the air layer thickness before and during the wetting process. Based on the time evolution of the extracted profiles obtained at multiple times, we measure the velocity of air exiting from the gap between the liquid and the solid, and account for the wetting mechanism and bubble entrapment. The present work offers a tool to accurately measure the air layer profile and quan…
We study the non-continuous correction in the dynamics of drop impact on a solid substrate. Close to impact, a thin film of gas is formed beneath the drop so that the local Knudsen number is of order one. We consider the first correction to the dynamics which consists of allowing slip of the gas along the substrate and the interface. We focus on the singular dynamics of entrapment that can be seen when surface tension and liquid viscosity can be neglected. There we show that different dynamical regimes are present that tend to lower the singularity strength. We finally suggest how these effect…
