Drop Shedding by Shear Flow for Hydrophilic to Superhydrophobic Surfaces

A balance of surface science and aerodynamic knowledge is brought to bear to elucidate the fundamental parameters determining the incipient motion (runback) for a drop exposed to shearing airflow. It was found that wetting parameters such as contact angle are very influential in determining the minimum required air velocity for drop shedding. On the basis of experimental results for drops of water and hexadecane (0.5−100 μL) on PMMA, Teflon, and a superhydrophobic aluminum surface, an exponential function is proposed that relates the critical air velocity for shedding to the ratio of drop base length to projected area. The results for all of the water systems can be collapsed to self-similar curves by normalization. Results from other researchers also conform to the exponential self-similar functional form proposed. It was shown that the data for hexadecane drops can be matched relatively well to those for water drops by means of a corrective factor based on fluid properties and contact angles. Also, the critical air velocity for shedding from the superhydrophobic surface is seen to be more constant over a range of volumes than for the other surfaces. Finally, contact angle measurements from airflow shedding experiments are compared to measurements made by tilted plate and quasi-static advancing and receding tests. The observed differences between contact angles from different measurement methods show that the transfer of contact angle data among various applications must be done with care.