Nonwetting of impinging droplets on textured surfaces

Abstract

This paper studies the impinging droplets on superhydrophobic textured surfaces and proposes a design guideline for nonwetting surfaces under droplet impingement. A new wetting pressure, the effective water hammer pressure, is introduced in the study to clearly define wetting states for the impinging droplets. This approach establishes the design criteria for nonwetting surfaces to impinging droplets. For impingement speed higher than raindrop speed, the surfaces need to have sub-100-nm features to generate a large enough antiwetting pressure for the droplets to take a nonwetting state after impingement. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.