Pressure Drop with Moving Contact Lines and Dynamic Contact Angles in a Hydrophobic Round Minichannel: Visualization via Synchrotron X-ray Imaging and Verification of Experimental Correlations

Abstract

In hydrophobic mini- and microchannels, slug flow with moving contact lines is typically generated under various two-phase flow conditions. There is a significant pressure drop in this flow pattern with moving contact lines, which is closely related to the dynamic contact angles. Researchers have investigated dynamic contact angles experimentally for decades, but due to the limitations of visualization techniques, these experiments have typically been conducted in low Weber number regions (We < 10-3). In this study, we clearly visualized the dynamic contact angles of a liquid slug in high Weber number regions (10-3 < We < 1) via synchrotron X-ray imaging with high temporal (~1000 fps) and spatial (~2 μm/pixel) resolutions. We precisely measured the pressure drop with moving contact lines in a hydrophobic mini-channel (inner diameter = 1.018 mm). On the basis of our experimental data, we verified previous correlations for dynamic contact angles and explored the relationship between pressure drop with moving contact lines and dynamic contact angles.