Hydrodynamics of droplet impingement on hot surfaces of varying wettability

This work presents on the hydrodynamics of water droplet impingement on superheated solid surfaces across the entire wettability spectrum: superhydrophilic, hydrophilic, hydrophobic and superhydrophobic. While a large body of work exists on droplet impingement on hydrophilic and superhydrophilic surfaces, impingement on the latter two has been largely neglected and the present results show that dynamics are dramatically different. Experiments ranging in surface temperature from 125°C to 415°C and Weber numbers from 10 to 225 were performed and analyzed using high-speed imaging. Some of the most striking differences are as follows. While atomization is always present for impingement on the hydrophilic and superhydrophilic surfaces at temperatures below the Leidenfrost point, atomization is absent at low Weber numbers and at low excess surface temperatures on the hydrophobic surface. At high surface temperatures, the attraction of vapor bubbles on the hydrophobic surface allows a vapor blanket to form more readily thus leading to Leidenfrost behavior at a much lower temperature than classically observed on a hydrophilic surface. One of the most interesting phenomenon that will be discussed includes what will be described as a “pseudo-Leidenfrost” state for impingement on the superhydrophobic surface. Because water can be suspended at the peaks of the roughness on a superhydrophobic interface, vapor escapes from underneath the droplet thus mimicking Leidenfrost behavior for all excess temperatures. This results in minimal atomization for superhydrophobic impingement over the entire regime explored. Finally, maximum spread diameters for Leidenfrost impingement are tabulated as a function of the Weber number for all surfaces and are shown to be larger on the smooth surfaces than on the textured ones indicating that droplet spreading at the Leidenfrost point is not independent of surface type as previously supposed.