4 research outputs found
Drop impact on superheated surfaces
At impact of a liquid droplet on a smooth surface heated above the liquid's
boiling point, the droplet either immediately boils when it contacts the
surfaces (``contact boiling''), or without any surface contact forms a
Leidenfrost vapor layer towards the hot surface and bounces back (``gentle film
boiling''), or both forms the Leidenfrost layer and ejects tiny droplets upward
(``spraying film boiling''). We experimentally determine conditions under which
impact behaviors in each regime can be realized. We show that the dimensionless
maximum spreading of impacting droplets on the heated surfaces in both
gentle and spraying film boiling regimes shows a universal scaling with the
Weber number \We (\gamma\sim\We^{2/5}) -- regardless of surface temperature
and of liquid properties -- which is much steeper than for the impact on
non-heated (hydrophilic or hydrophobic) surfaces (\gamma\sim\We^{1/4}). We
also intereferometrically measure the vapor thickness under the droplet
Leidenfrost temperature increase for impacting droplets on carbon-nanofiber surfaces
Droplets impacting on a superheated surface can either exhibit a contact
boiling regime, in which they make direct contact with the surface and boil
violently, or a film boiling regime, in which they remain separated from the
surface by their own vapor. The transition from the contact to the film boiling
regime depends not only on the temperature of the surface and kinetic energy of
the droplet, but also on the size of the structures fabricated on the surface.
Here we experimentally show that surfaces covered with carbon-nanofibers delay
the transition to film boiling to much higher temperature compared to smooth
surfaces. We present physical arguments showing that, because of the small
scale of the carbon fibers, they are cooled by the vapor flow just before the
liquid impact, thus permitting contact boiling up to much higher temperatures
than on smooth surfaces. We also show that, as long as the impact is in the
film boiling regime, the spreading factor of impacting droplets follows the
same \We^{3/10} scaling (with \We the Weber number) found for smooth
surfaces, which is caused by the vapor flow underneath the droplet.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure