One of the most complicated issues the aerospace and aviation industries are dealing with is aircraft icing. The impact and freezing process of a water droplet on a cold surface has been investigated over time in order to develop preventative methods for avoiding icing. In the present study, we examined the behavior of a water droplet impacting on an aluminum plate with a surface roughness of 0.01µm and surface temperature variation from room temperature to 0oC, −5oC, −10oC and −15oC. The effect of droplet impact Reynolds number along with surface temperature variation on non-dimensional parameters like spread factor, retraction rate, and spread velocity is analyzed. The increase in impact Reynolds number and droplet spread factor is observed with a rise in the initial height of the droplet. At a higher Reynolds number, inertial forces are dominant over viscous and capillary forces, while at a lower Reynolds number, surface temperature shows a significant effect. The graphical representation of droplet retraction rate indicates a decrease with lower surface temperature and a rise with higher Reynolds numbers. Moreover, the spread velocity of the droplet is higher with an increased Reynolds number, and surface temperature does not have a notable effect on it. A rapid transition of momentum from vertical to horizontal direction occurs, and droplet dissipates energy in overcoming the viscous effects. The effect of surface roughness variation coupled with surface temperature is investigated in detail for three different surface roughness of aluminum and glass. The increase in surface roughness and temperature enhance hydrophobic behavior by repelling the droplet, while reduced surface temperatures show hydrophilic behavior by causing adhesion of the droplet on surface. / Master of Science / The supercool water droplets exist in the atmosphere and whenever these droplets come in contact with a cold surface, ice is formed. This ice accretion phenomena is observed not only on aircraft's control surfaces, but also on jet engines, power transmission lines and wind turbine blades. Research is on going to understand the impact and freezing process of water droplets on different cold surfaces and subsequently devise methods for avoiding this phenomena. In the current research work, the droplet impact is analyzed on an aluminum plate with surface roughness of 0.01µm. The spread factor of the droplet indicates the liquid surface contact area, and an increase is observed at larger heights in spread factor, impact velocity, and Reynolds number due to high inertia. Then, the surface temperature is varied from 0oC to −5oC, −10oC and −15oC, and it is observed that as the viscous effects are higher at lower surface temperatures, the droplet dissipates more energy in overcoming the high viscous effects and the spread factor decreases . Moreover, the spread velocity of the droplet is the measure of rate at which the liquid-solid contact area increases. Initially the droplet has vertical momentum, and on impact it shifts from vertical to horizontal direction, as the velocity rises drastically after impact. Surface roughness is another important factor that affects the ability of a surface to repel (hydrophobic) and attract (hydrophilic) the droplet by affecting its spread rate. The more the surface roughness, the droplet spread factor reduces and droplet rebounds indicating the hydrophobic nature. While adhesion is observed at the lower surface temperature, even with high roughness, showing the hydrophilic nature.

Dynamic behavior of impacting water drops on superhydrophobic solid surfaces provides important details on the stability/durability of such solid surfaces. Multi-scale surface roughness combined with a layer of low energy chemical is an essential surface modification process followed to create superhydrophobic capabilities on solid surfaces. The present work aims at studying the effect of low energy surface coating on droplet impact dynamics by carrying out experiments of water drop impacts on rough solid surfaces with and without chemical modification. A group of six aluminium alloy (Al6061) surfaces (three pairs) are prepared. Roughness, characterized in terms mean surface roughness, Ra, is introduced to these metallic surfaces using sand-paper polishing, electric discharge machining (EDM), and chemical based surface etching process. Low energy surface layer is laid on the rough surfaces by coating NeverWet hydrophobic solution, octadecyl-trichloro-silane (OTS), and perfluorodecyltricholorosilane (FAS-17). The impact dynamics of water drops is analyzed by capturing high speed videos for a range of drop Weber number from 1 to 570 and the salient features of drop impact process on the coated rough surfaces are compared with the corresponding uncoated rough surfaces. A one-to-one comparison on the spreading, fingering, receding, and final equilibrium of impacting drops on the coated and uncoated target surfaces is presented. Upon coating NeverWet, the original surface features of the base aluminium surface are completely covered by the hydrophobic coating material resulting in a fresh top surface layer. The outcomes as well as the bounce-off characteristics of impacting water drops on the coated surface are comparable to those observed on lotus leaf. The surface morphology features of rough aluminium surfaces coated with OTS and FAS-17 are comparable to those of the corresponding uncoated surfaces. The quantitative measurements on primary spreading and maximum spread factor of impacting drops are largely unaffected by the presence of low energy chemical coating. The dominant effect of surface coating is seen on the receding of impacting drops and hence the final drop configuration. This behavior is more prominently seen on EDM fabricated rough surface (larger Ra) combined with OTS coating than that on etching based rough surface (smaller Ra) combined with FAS-17 coating highlighting the dependence of coating effect with roughness features.