Smoothed particle hydrodynamics study of the roughness effect on contact angle and droplet flow

Journal Article · Fri Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2017 · Physical Review E

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.96.033115· OSTI ID:1406750

Shigorina, Elena; Kordilla, Jannes; Tartakovsky, Alexandre M.

We employ a pairwise force Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (PF-SPH) model to simulate sessile and transient droplets on rough hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces. PF-SPH allows for modeling of free surface flow without discretizing the air phase, which is achieved by imposing the surface tension and dynamic contact angles with pairwise interaction forces. We use the PF-SPH model to study the effect of surface roughness and microscopic contact angle on the effective contact angle and droplet dynamics. In the first part of this work, we investigate static contact angles of sessile droplets on rough surfaces in a shape of a sinusoidal function and made of rectangular bars placed on top of a flat surface. We find that the effective static contact angles of Cassie and Wenzel droplets on a rough surface are greater than the corresponding microscale static contact angles. As a result, microscale hydrophobic rough surfaces also show effective hydrophobic behavior. On the other hand, microscale hydrophilic surfaces may be macroscopically hydrophilic or hydrophobic, depending on the type of roughness. Next, we study the impact of the roughness orientation (i.e., an anisotropic roughness) and surface inclination on droplet flow velocities. Simulations show that droplet flow velocities are lower if the surface roughness is oriented perpendicular to the flow direction. If the predominant elements of surface roughness are in alignment with the flow direction, the flow velocities increase compared to smooth surfaces, which can be attributed to the decrease in fluid-solid contact area similar to the classical lotus effect. We demonstrate that linear scaling relationships between Bond and capillary number for droplet flow on flat surfaces also hold for flow on rough surfaces.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) (SC-21)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1406750
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-123800; KJ0401000
• Journal Information: Physical Review E, Journal Name: Physical Review E Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 96; ISSN PLEEE8; ISSN 2470-0045
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

Roughness
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics
droplet flow