Computational simulation of water removal from a flat plate, using surface acoustic waves

Abstract

Minimization of drop contact time is so important and critical for applications such as self-cleaning and anti-corrosion. In recent years, surface acoustic waves are presented as a powerful method for the manipulation of the drops. In this manuscript, a numerical study of drop shedding under the effect of acoustic waves is presented, which may have potential use in the anti-icing systems. Therefore, the effects of different parameters, such as acoustic wave frequency, amplitude, and direction of the wave on the water removal, are investigated. For this purpose, a color gradient lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is developed and used in these simulations. The acoustic actuator effect is added as a source term in the LBM governing equation. The obtained results showed, when wave amplitude was increased by about 50%, contact time was reduced by about 47%. Also, the dynamical behaviors of drop in the situations of single right-running and single left-running waves were similar. The dynamical behaviors were investigated based on vortical structures which were performed because of the interaction of waves and drop. Our results showed the most effective situation happened when a pair of SAWs with the same amplitudes and frequencies were applied. In this condition, the contact time decreased by a factor of 3.