Drop splashing is independent of substrate wetting
Abstract
A liquid drop impacting a dry solid surface with sufficient kinetic energy will splash, breaking apart into numerous secondary droplets. This phenomenon shows many similarities to forced wetting, including the entrainment of air at the contact line. Because of these similarities and the fact that forced wetting has been shown to depend on the wetting properties of the surface, existing theories predict splashing to depend on wetting properties as well. However, using high-speed interference imaging, we observe that at high capillary numbers wetting properties have no effect on splashing for various liquid-surface combinations. Additionally, by fully resolving the Navier-Stokes equations at length and time scales inaccessible to experiments, we find that the shape and motion of the air-liquid interface at the contact line/edge of the droplet are independent of wettability. We use these findings to evaluate existing theories and to compare splashing with forced wetting.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2018
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.5012529
Entities
People
- Andrzej Latka
- Arnout Boelens
- Juan J. de Pablo
- Sidney R. Nagel
Organizations
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- University of Chicago