A series of experiments have been performed to demonstrate the significant drag reduction of the laminar flow in the ultrahydrophobic channels with dual-scale micro-nano structured surfaces.However,in previous experiments,the ultrahydrophobic surfaces were fabricated with micro-structures or nano-structures and the channels were on the microscale.For the drag reduction in macro-scale channels few reports are available.Here a new method was developed to fabricate ultrahydrophobic surfaces with micro-nano hierarchical structures made from carbon nanotubes.The drag reductions up to 36.3% were observed in the macro-channels with ultrahydrophobic surfaces.The micro-PIV was used to measure the flow velocity in channels.Compared with the traditional no-slip theory at walls,a significant slip velocity was observed on the ultrahydrophobic surfaces.
The apparent contact angle of Cassie-Baxter state water droplets can be calculated by the existing theoretical formula, but due to the defects of the micro-structured hydrophobic surface and some inevitable tiny disturbances in the experiment, Cassie-Baxter state water droplets will appear partly in Wenzel state, that is, the mixed state water droplets. In this paper, apparent contact angles of Cassie-Baxter state and mixed state water droplets on micro-structured hydrophobic surfaces are compared. The research shows that if the projected area fraction of water-solid F in the Cassie-Baxter formula is replaced by the local projected area fraction of water-solid F′, the apparent contact angles of water droplets in both Cassie-Baxter state and the mixed state can be calculated. Further experimental results indicate that the contact state of water droplets nearby the outermost three-phase contact line plays a more important role in determining the apparent contact angle. This conclusion is significant to the understanding of the apparent contact angle and wetting property.
YANG ChangWei, HE Feng & HAO PengFei School of Aerospace, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
The dynamic wetting characteristics of water droplets on silicon wafers with microscale regular pillars structures and fresh lotus leaves are investigated experimentally.We measured the static contact angle,contact angle hysteresis,and roll-off angle of water droplets on both of these superhydrophobic surfaces with a high speed contact angle meter.The dynamic contact angles and internal velocity distribution of water droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces were studied with a high-speed camera system and a particle image velocimetry (PIV) system,respectively.We found that the acceleration of water droplets when they slide off lotus leaves is greater than that of water droplets sliding off the silicon wafers with microscale pillar structures although the static contact angles of water droplets on lotus leaves are slightly smaller than those on the silicon wafers.The reason is that water droplets sliding off lotus leaves have smaller contact angle hysteresis and larger slip velocities.These results indicate that the dynamic contact angle hysteresis and sliding acceleration of liquid droplets are more suitable for reflecting the hydrophobicity of material surfaces compared with static contact angles.Our experiments also show that lotus leaves with multiscale micro/nanostructures have stronger hydrophobicity and self-cleaning properties compared with the micro-structured superhydrophobic surfaces.
With the development of the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS),the flow characteristics in micro-channels have drawn increasing attention.In this paper,numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the flow characteristics of compressible flow through micro-channels and micronozzles.An improved surface roughness viscosity model is used to simulate the effect of surface roughness on micro-channels flow characteristics.Using this model,better agreements between the computational results and the experimental data are found.The result indicates that the surface roughness is one of the important factors affecting the flow characteristics of gas through micro-channels.The numerical investigation on the expansion channel shows that by using the laminar model that considers surface roughness,the computational results and experimental data are consistent when Re<450,whereas deviation increases when Re>450.Based on the synthetic model with considerations of turbulence viscosity and surface roughness,the numerical results and the experimental data are identical.
We report on our study of the static and dynamic wetting property of hydrophobic surfaces with micro-and dual micro/nano-scale structures.Simulations based on the lattice Boltzmann method showed that the apparent contact angle of water droplets on hy-drophobic surfaces with micro-scale structures increases as solid area decreases,whereas dual micro/nano-scale structures not only increase surface hydrophobicity but also greatly stabilize the Cassie state of droplets.Droplets falling on a superhydrophobic surface distort and,depending of free energy,sometimes bounced on the surface before finally adhering to the surface.These phenomena are in agreement with experimental observations.Simulated results also show that micro/nano-scale surface structures can increase droplet rebound height,which depends on static apparent contact angle.
With a low surface energy, high apparent contact angle(>150°) and low sliding angle(<5°), superhy- drophobic surface has recently been attracting a great deal of attention. The true factor determining the sliding angle still remains unclear. In this paper, various superhydrophobic silicon surfaces with pillars are fabricated by photolithography and hydrophobized with octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS). Relations between sliding angles and micro-structured surfaces are being investigated in detail with 10 mg water droplets in C-B state and mixed state. Experimental pictures and data show that the sliding angle is independent of pillar heights from 20 to 80 μm, increasing the space between pillars causes decrease in sliding angle, and increasing the side lengths of pillars causes increase in sliding angle. Moreover, the sliding angle is irrelevant to the state of interfacial contact area of water-solid and lower contact line. It is concluded that the sliding angle of water droplet on the micro-structured surface is merely deter-mined by the upper contact line.
