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Impact and Departure Dynamics of Droplets and Bubbles

Droplets and bubbles are important for understanding natural phenomena such as falling raindrops, airborne disease transmission, and plant respiration systems, and also for engineering contexts such as semiconductor fabrication, nuclear power plants, and electronics cooling. However, still, more understanding is needed of these complex dynamics problems. This dissertation will talk about the droplet impact and bubble departure dynamics that are happening on various surfaces. In Chapters 2 and 3, we will explore how raindrops can transmit plant pathogens. When the raindrop impacts the infected wheat leaf, the micron-sized dry spore can liberate from the surface in two different ways: dry dispersal and wet dispersal. The dry spore can liberate from the surface by the inertia of the drop, after that, the air vortex generated by the drop impact can carry the dry spores above the laminar boundary layer, with the potential for long-distance transport. For the wet dispersal, spore-laden droplets can be generated after raindrop impact, but how these spore-laden droplets can make neighboring plant diseases is still a mystery. We have shown that the splashed droplets can stick to the adjacent healthy leaf depending on the inertia of the impacting droplet, anisotropic leaf orientation, and whether it is treated with fungicide or not. In Chapter 4, We design a micropillar aluminum substrate that preferentially grows frost on top of the pillars. When deposited droplets impact the frost-tipped pillars, the dynamic pressure causes the water to wick within the frost faster than it can impale the gaps between the pillars. Upon freezing, this safely suspends the resulting ice sheet in the air-trapping Cassie state, without any surface coatings required. For the last part (Chapter 5), we investigated the bubble coalescence dynamics that can depart the bubble with a micrometer size. We made the micro-structured surfaces tailored to nucleation sites to enable the coalescence-induced departure of micro-bubbles. A scaling model reveals two different modes of bubble departure following the coalescence-induced depinning: capillary-inertial jumping for micrometric bubbles and a buoyant-inertial departure for millimetric ones. Eventually, this small bubble departure can delay film boiling which can be the barrier to the boiling heat transfer. / Doctor of Philosophy / Dynamic interaction of droplets and bubbles with different surfaces is ubiquitous: an impacting rain droplet on a plant leaf is responsible for transmitting thousands of plant pathogens, or decreasing the departure size of bubbles on the surface of heat exchangers would increase their efficiency. It is now well-understood that the departure of condensed droplets on water repellent surfaces exhibits superior heat transfer compared to all other modes of condensation and also enables self-cleaning, delayed frosting, and anti-fogging surface technology.In Chapters 2 and 3, we are studying the dynamic interaction of raindrops and wheat leaves. By depositing water droplets on diseased leaves, we found out a raindrop can transmit wheat pathogens. This simple but important phenomenon would adversely affect the quality of our wheat which is the most widely grown crop in the world, contributing to a large amount of portion the global food supply. Chapter 4 sheds light on another example of the dynamic interaction of raindrops and an icy surface. We designed a pillared aluminum substrate that preferentially grows condensation frosting on top of the pillars. With this passive anti-frosting technology, we are able to trap water droplets and ice in the suspending water droplets in the air-trapping Cassie state without using a fragile nanotextured structure or a complex re-entrant structure. Upon freezing, this safely suspends the resulting ice sheet in the air-trapping Cassie state, without any surface coatings required. Under a cold and humid environment, Cassie water freezes into Cassie ice which is advantageous for its low surface adhesion. In Chapter 5, we show that rationally micro-structured surfaces tailor nucleation sites to enable the coalescence-induced departure of micro-bubbles. With this technique, we are able to remove surface bubbles at smaller sizes that would result in enhancing the critical heat flux of nucleate boiling. We have used a blend of experiments and scaling to understand the underlying physics of this phase-change problem.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/111211
Date11 July 2022
CreatorsPark, Hyunggon
ContributorsEngineering Science and Mechanics, Boreyko, Jonathan B., Ragab, Saad A., Jung, Sunghwan, Schmale, David G. III, Socha, John J.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
FormatETD, application/pdf, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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