Abstract
Reducing the contact time of a water droplet on non-wetting surfaces has great potential in the areas of self-cleaning and anti-icing, and gradually develops into a hot issue in the field of wettability surfaces. However, the existing literature on dynamic behavior of water drops impacting on superhydrophobic surfaces with various structural shapes is insufficient. Inspired by the microstructure of lotus leaf and rice leaf, dual-level and three-level structures on plane and convex surfaces were successfully fabricated by wire electrical discharge machining on aluminum alloy. After spraying hydrophobic nanoparticles on the surfaces, the plane and convex surfaces with dual-level and three-level structures showed good superhydrophobic property. Bouncing dynamics of impact droplets on the superhydrophobic surfaces wereinvestigated, and the results indicated that the contact time of plane superhydrophobic surface with a three-level structure was minimal, which is 60.4% less than the plane superhydrophobic surface with dual-level structure. The effect of the interval S, width D, and height H of the structure on the plane superhydrophobic surface with three-level structure on contact time was evaluated to obtain the best structural parameters for reducing contact time. This research is believed to guide the direction of the structural design of the droplet impinging on solid surfaces.
Highlights
Water droplet impact on solid surfaces is commonly found in our daily lives
The above methods can achieve the superhydrophobic aluminum surfaces, the researchers are only interested in the wettability of the surface or the preparation of superhydrophobic surfaces, and little attention is paid to the dynamic contact process of the droplets on the superhydrophobic surface
According to the structural characteristics of the lotus leaf and rice leaf surfaces, the dual-level and three-level structures were constructed on the plane and convex surfaces of the aluminum alloy by wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) technique
Summary
Water droplet impact on solid surfaces is commonly found in our daily lives. It is a very important physical phenomenon that reflects the dynamic wetting behavior of water droplets on solid surfaces. With the deepening of research on superhydrophobic surfaces in recent years, researchers have found that reducing the contact time of a water droplet on superhydrophobic surfaces plays an important role in self-cleaning and anti-icing applications and gradually develops into a hot issue in the field of wettability surfaces [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. If we can reduce the contact time on superhydrophobic aluminum surfaces, the range of use of superhydrophobic surfaces will be much expanded
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