The simulation of droplet impact on the super-hydrophobic surface with micro-pillar arrays fabricated by laser irradiation and silanization processes

Abstract

Super-hydrophobicity is one of the significant natural phenomena, which has inspired researchers to fabricate artificial smart materials using advanced manufacturing techniques. In this study, a super-hydrophobic aluminum surface was prepared by nanosecond laser texturing and FAS modification in sequence. The surface wettability turned from original hydrophilicity to super-hydrophilicity immediately after laser treatment. Then it changed to super-hydrophobicity showing a WCA of 157.6 ± 1.2° with a SA of 1.7 ± 0.7° when the laser-induced rough surface being coated with a layer of FAS molecules. The transforming mechanism was further explored from physical and chemical aspects based on the analyses of surface morphology and surface chemistry. Besides, the motion process of droplet impacting super-hydrophobic surface was systematically analyzed via the optimization of simulation calculation grid and the simulation method of volume of fluid (VOF). Based on this simulation method, the morphological changes, the inside pressure distribution and velocity of the droplet were further investigated. And the motion mechanism of the droplet on super-hydrophobic surface was clearly revealed in this paper. The simulation results and the images captured by high-speed camera were highly consistent, which indicated that the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an effective method to predict the droplet motion on super- hydrophobic surfaces. This paper can provide an explicit guidance for the selection of suitable methods for functional surfaces with different requirements in the industry.