Center for Advanced Research in Drying » An Investigation of the Role of Area, Scale, and Hierarchical Surface Topography in Wetting and Drying of Stochastically Patterned Surfaces

Overview

The observed area of any surface is dependent on both the scale of the observation and the topography of the surface. Droplet evaporation has been shown to be influenced by 1) contact angle, 2) increasing mass transfer rate as droplet air-liquid surface area increases with increasing contact angle, and more recently, 3) surface orientation and the resulting droplet shape. Multiscale techniques consider how the performance of a surface (such as water evaporation rate) depends on the combination of surface topography and scale to identify dominant surface characteristics and the scales at which they act. This work can be done on water or oil absorption/desorption. The objective of the present work is to identify the effect of relative area and scale on evaporation rate of porous and non-porous surfaces.