ABSTACT: This paper presents an experimental study on thermal transport to single water droplets evaporating on heated bi-phobic surfaces consisting of a superhydrophobic matrix with a circular hydrophobic pattern with strong contact line pinning. A single water droplet of 8 µl volume is placed on a preheated surface and allowed to evaporate in an open laboratory environment. We investigate the influence of substrate orientation (horizontal and vertical) on evaporation dynamics. Using optical and infrared imaging, we report droplet fluid dynamics and heat transfer characteristics of the evaporating droplet. Overall, evaporation is more efficient on the vertical surface, exhibiting higher total heat transfer rates and up to 10% shorter evaporation times. Counterintuitively, on the vertical surface, the substrate-droplet interfacial heat flux was higher near the lower contact line than in the upper region, despite a high contact angle and an expected wedge effect at the bottom. At the same time, the temperature is colder in the lower part of the droplet. We attribute this apparent anomaly to the competition between sensible heating and evaporation, and a modified convective flow signature (both within the droplet and the gas phase) compared to a horizontal surface. We also show that the thermal signature becomes uniform once the contact angles at the upper and lower contact lines become equal towards the end of the evaporation process. Insights from this work can guide the design of spray cooling devices, or be used to alter particle deposition patterns during evaporation-based fabrication techniques and ink-jet printing.

This paper reports the dynamic wetting behavior and heat transfer characteristics for impinging droplets on heated bi-phobic surfaces (superhydrophobic matrix with hydrophobic spots). A non-patterned superhydrophobic and a sticky hydrophobic surface acted as control wettability surfaces. As expected, differences in wetting and heat transfer dynamics were noticeable for all surfaces with the most pronounced variation during the receding phase. During spreading, inertia from the impact dominated the droplet dynamics, and heat transfer was dominated by convection at the contact line and internal flow. As contact line velocities decreased over time, evaporative cooling at the contact line gained importance, especially for the bi-phobic surfaces, where liquid remained trapped on the hydrophobic spots during receding. These satellite droplets increased the contact area and contact line length and assisted heat transfer and substrate cooling after lift-off of the main droplet. Compared with the hydrophobic surface, the contribution of the contact line heat transfer increased by 17%–27% on the bi-phobic surfaces depending on the location of impact relative to the hydrophobic spots. Nonetheless, the bi-phobic surfaces had a lower total thermal energy transfer. However, compared with the plain superhydrophobic surface, heat transfer was enhanced by 33%–46% by patterning the surface. Depending on the application, a trade-off exists between the different surfaces: the sticky hydrophobic surface provides the best cooling efficiency yet is prone to flooding, whereas the superhydrophobic surface repels the liquid but has poor cooling efficiency. The bi-phobic surfaces provide a middle path with reasonable cooling effectiveness and low flooding probability.

No abstract

No abstract

Injection flow dynamics plays a significant role in fuel spray; this process controls the fuel–air mixing, which in turn is critical for the combustion and emissions process in diesel engine. In the current study, an integrated spray, combustion, and emission numerical model is developed for diesel engine computations based on the general transport equation analysis (GTEA) code. The model is first applied to predict the effect of turbulence inside the nozzle, which is considered by the submodel of hybrid breakup model on diesel spray process. The results indicate that turbulence term enhances the rate of breakup, resulting in more new droplets and smaller droplet sizes, leading to high evaporation rate with more evaporated mass. The model is also applied to simulate combustion and soot formation process of diesel. The effects of ambient density, ambient temperature, oxygen concentration and reaction mechanism on ignition delay, flame lift-off length, and soot formation are analyzed and discussed. The results show that although higher ambient density and temperature reduce the ignition delay and cause the flame stabilization location to move upstream, this is not helpful for fuel–air mixing because it increases the soot level in the fuel jet. While higher oxygen concentration has negative effects on soot formation. In addition, the model is employed to simulate the combustion and emission characteristics of a low-temperature combustion engine. The overall agreement between the measurements and predictions of in-cylinder pressure, heat release, and emission characteristics are satisfactory.