The effectiveness of coalescence-induced jumping of microdroplets on superhydrophobic surfaces is critical to a wide range of applications such as self-cleaning surfaces, anti-icing/frosting, water harvesting, phase-change heat transfer, and hotspot cooling. Introducing textures on the surfaces can readily enlarge the effective contact angle, while an overlarge texture spacing may unfavorably lead to droplet penetration into the gaps in droplet coalescence processes. To clarify the effect of surface textures on the droplet jumping dynamics, we simulated the coalescence of droplets on textured superhydrophobic surfaces with various surface wettability and texture spacings and theoretically derived the critical conditions of jumping and the optimal condition of maximum jumping velocity. The results show that the nonmonotonic emergence of "nonjumping"−"jumping"−"nonjumping" with decreasing solid fraction is synergistically controlled by the surface adhesion and the effective impinging pressure. At a large solid fraction, the transition from "nonjumping" to "jumping" is caused by the reduction of the dimensionless surface adhesion energy below a critical value, which is determined to be 0.035 for Oh = 0.02 and 0.01 for Oh = 0.12. At a small solid fraction, the transition from "jumping" to "nonjumping" is dominated by the reduction of the dimensionless effective impinging pressure, the critical value of which is identified to be 0.14 and is independent of Oh. Moreover, jumping velocity maximizes when wetting critically transits from the Cassie−Baxter (CB) state to the partial-wetting state, and a penetration index is proposed from the wetting theory to predict such transition, which shows good agreement with both present simulations and previous experiments. The present findings are helpful for the design of superhydrophobic surfaces that pursue robust and efficient jumping of droplets.

No abstract

The impact dynamics and internal mixing of a droplet onto a liquid-gas interface of lower surface tension was studied both experimentally and numerically, with both the Ohnesorge number (Oh) and the Bond number (Bo) being fixed. Compared to the droplet impact onto a pool of identical liquid, the interfacial Marangoni flow entrains abundant fluid upward and hence induces an additional jet breakup during crater formation (the first breakup), and it facilitates the emergence of the Rayleigh jet breakup (the second breakup) during crater restoration and enhances the vortical mixing beneath the liquid surface. Specifically, with the increase of the impact inertia, the first breakup manifests a nonmonotonic trend of "absence-presence-absence." The former transition of "absencepresence" at a low droplet-based Weber number (We d ) is caused by the shortened path of the Marangoni flow on the faster-growing liquid bridge, and the later transition of "presence-absence" at a high We d is resulted from the reduced displacement velocity of the pool fluid on the expanding crater surface. The second breakup corresponds to the Rayleigh jet breakup without surface tension difference and occurs monotonically beyond a certain We d . Due to the relatively short displacement time of the Marangoni flow on the crater surface compared to the time for crater formation, the critical condition for the emergence of the second jet breakup could be described by the critical reservoir-fluid-based We number (We r ). The critical We r contains two parts: the Bo-dependent critical We r0 without surface tension difference, and the increased viscous dissipation from the wrap-up motion of the Marangoni flow. Furthermore, capillary waves are also induced by the Marangoni flow during crater restoration, and the accompanied vorticity generation causes the mixing pattern to exhibit multiple vortex rings and even a clawlike structure, which is substantially enhanced compared to the vortical mixing without surface tension difference.

No abstract