Role of drop shape on drop impact with solidification

Drop impact is common in industrial applications and nature. As in the 3D printing, the drops squeezed out of the nozzle do not have to take on a spherical shape. This paper delves into the role of drop shape in drop impact with solidification under the 3D printing conditions. To track the rapidly evolving liquid-gas interface, the Cahn-Hilliard-based phase field method is employed. The solid-liquid interface is tracked by the liquid fraction. The model is discretized using an explicit finite difference scheme on a half-staggered grid. The code was written in FORTRAN and enhanced with the OpenMP technique. After being validated against experimental data, the model was applied to various cases. Moreover, the paper took into account a number of factors influencing drop impact and solidification dynamics, such as aspect ratio, contact angle, and thermal contact resistance. It was found that the aspect ratio exerts little effect on drop profile for the cases under consideration when solidification is on, but that the contact angle could drastically reduce freezing time, converting the convex solidfication pattern to a concave one.