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Resurrection of a superhydrophobic cylinder impacting onto liquid bath

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2024

Wanqiu Zhang
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China
Yaochen Mei
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China
Chenyu Fu
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China
Xinping Zhou*
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China
*
†Email address for correspondence: xpzhou08@hust.edu.cn

Abstract

An interesting resurrection phenomenon (including the initial complete submersion, subsequent resurfacing and final rebounding) of a superhydrophobic sphere impacting onto a liquid bath was observed in experiments and direct numerical simulations by Galeano-Rios et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 912, 2021, A17). We investigate the mechanisms of the liquid entry for a superhydrophobic cylinder in this paper. The superhydrophobic cylinder, commonly employed as supporting legs for insects and robots at the liquid surface, can exhibit liquid-entry mechanisms different from those observed with the sphere. The direct numerical simulation method is applied to the impact of a two-dimensional (2-D) superhydrophobic cylinder (modelled as a pseudo-solid) onto a liquid bath. We find that for the impacting cylinder the resurrection phenomenon can also exist, and the cylinder can either rebound (get detached from the liquid surface) or stay afloat after resurfacing. The cylinder impact behaviour is classified into four regimes, i.e. floating, bouncing, resurrecting (resurrecting-floating and resurrecting-bouncing) and sinking, dependent on the Weber number and the density ratio of the cylinder to the liquid. For the regimes of floating and bouncing, the force analysis indicates that the form drag dominates the motion of the cylinder in the very beginning of the impact, while subsequently the surface tension force also plays a role with the contact line pinning on the horizontal midline of the cylinder. For the critical states of the highlighted resurrecting regime, our numerical results show that the rising height for the completely submerged cylinder of different density ratios remains nearly unchanged. Accordingly, a relation between the maximum ascending velocity and the density ratio is derived to predict whether the completely submerged cylinder can resurface.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Schematic of a superhydrophobic circular cylinder impacting on the liquid surface. The origin of the dimensional Cartesian coordinates system $\textrm{(}\bar{x}\textrm{,}\bar{y}\textrm{)}$ is located at the intersection of the symmetry axis (the vertical dot-dashed line) and the undisturbed liquid–gas interface (the horizontal dashed line). The azimuth angle α of the contact line (contact point in two dimensions) starting from the negative $\bar{y}$ axis is equal to the inclination angle φ of the liquid surface at the contact line starting from the positive $\bar{x}$ axis, because the theoretical contact angle θ is equal to 180° in the simulations (see Appendix A). Here α and φ are both measured counterclockwise.

Figure 1

Table 1. Values of relevant parameters used in our DNS.

Figure 2

Figure 2. (a) Trajectory of the lowest point on the sphere. Solid curves correspond to experimental data by Galeano-Rios et al. (2021) and dashed curves to our 2-D axisymmetric simulations. The circle points indicate the moment when the sphere gets detached from the water surface in our simulations. (b) Time evolution of pseudo-solid deformation in our simulation. The data in (b) correspond to the simulation of V = 0.4024 m s−1 in (a). The deformed diameters ${\bar{D}_1}$ and ${\bar{D}_2}$ are as defined in the inset of (b). For the liquid (i.e. water), the parameters are given as density ${\rho _l} = {10^3}\ \textrm{kg}\ {\textrm{m}^{ - 3}}$, viscosity ${\mu _l} = 0.978 \times {10^{ - 3}}\ \textrm{Pa}\ \textrm{s}$ and the surface tension of the liquid surface σl = 0.072 N m−1. For the solid sphere (pseudo-solid in simulations), the parameters are given as initial diameter D = 0.166 cm, density ${\rho _s} = 2.2 \times {10^3}\ \textrm{kg}\;{\textrm{m}^{ - 3}}$, viscosity $\mu_{s}$ = 250 $\mu_{l}$ and the surface tension of the pseudo-solid surface σs = 20 σl. These values of parameters are also seen in Galeano-Rios et al. (2021). For the parameters of gas (not given in Galeano-Rios et al.2021), ${\rho _g} = 10\ \textrm{kg}\;{\textrm{m}^{ - 3}}$ and ${\mu _g} = {10^{ - 5}}\ \textrm{Pa}\ \textrm{s}$ are employed in our simulations.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Representative snapshots of a superhydrophobic cylinder impacting on the liquid surface (where λρ = 1.2 and θ = 180°) for four distinct impact regimes: (a) floating for Wel = 15, (b) bouncing for Wel = 30, (c) resurrecting for Wel = 37 and (d) sinking for Wel = 40. The blue curves denote the gas–liquid interfaces, and the black arrows denote the velocity vectors. The width for the domain depicted in each snapshot is 4D (see the first snapshot in d) and the scale is uniform in length and width. The enlarged drawing at the right in this figure corresponds to the snapshot of τ = 16.9 in (c), where gas is trapped around the cylinder.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Time evolution of (a) centre height and (b) vertical velocity of the cylinder centre for the four flow regimes in figure 3, i.e. floating (Wel = 15), bouncing (Wel = 30), resurrecting (Wel = 37) and sinking (Wel = 40). The black solid line of y = 0 indicates the undisturbed liquid line height, (□) indicates the moment when the cylinder starts to detach from the liquid, ($\bigcirc$) represents the moment when the cylinder is just fully submerged by liquid and ($\times$) indicates the moment when the cylinder starts to resurface from the liquid.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Phase diagram of a 2-D cylinder impacting onto a liquid bath in a parameter space (λρ, Wel). The four phases include the regimes of floating, bouncing, resurrecting (with floating and bouncing) and sinking. The cases of resurrecting with bouncing are rare for the impacting cylinder. Other parameters are listed in table 1.

Figure 6

Figure 6. The volumes of liquid displaced by the wetted portion of the cylinder (Sw), the deformed liquid–gas interface (Sσ) and the cavity above the wetted portion of the cylinder (Sc).

Figure 7

Figure 7. Time evolution of (a) vertical components of the total hydrodynamic force, the capillary force and the gravitational force exerted on the cylinder for the case of floating regime at Wel = 15 and λρ = 1.2, and (b) strength of the vertical component of the capillary force in terms of sin α at λρ = 1.2 for Wel = 15 (floating), Wel = 18 (bouncing), Wel = 36 (bouncing), Wel = 37 (resurrecting) and Wel = 40 (sinking). In (a), time ranges A, B and C correspond to the slamming, pinning and sliding stages, respectively. In (b), (□) indicates the moment when the cylinder starts to detach from the liquid, ($\bigcirc$) represents the moment when the cylinder is just fully submerged by liquid and ($\times$) indicates the moment when the cylinder starts to resurface from the liquid. The snapshots in the four insets of (b) correspond to τ = 0.4, 5, 13 and 19.5 (from left to right) for Wel = 36. For Wel = 15, 37 and 40, the corresponding snapshots are seen in figure 3.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Time evolution of the non-dimensional cylinder velocity ${v_s}$ (where ${v_{cr}}\textrm{ = }{\bar{v}_{cr}}/V$) at the slamming stage and the pinning stage for a case of the floating regime at Wel = 15 and λρ = 1.2. The dashed curve denotes theoretical results that are calculated from (3.6) and (3.8).

Figure 9

Figure 9. (a) The definition of the non-dimensional critical height difference, where $\Delta {H_{cr}} = \Delta {\bar{H}_{cr}}/D$. (b) $\Delta {H_{cr}}$ for different values of λρ; (×) indicate the results from DNS.

Figure 10

Figure 10. Non-dimensional critical velocity ${v_{cr}}$ as a function of λρ, where ${v_{cr}} = {\bar{v}_{cr}}/V$. All crosses are obtained from the cases in the resurrecting regime closest to the boundary between the resurrecting regime and the sinking regime in the phase diagram (figure 5), except for the cross at λρ = 1, which is predicted theoretically.

Figure 11

Figure 11. Surface tension forces at the three-phase region. The surface tension coefficients for the liquid–gas interface, the solid–gas interface and the solid–liquid interface are denoted by σlg, σsg and σsl, respectively. The direction angles β, φ and γ of these forces are all measured counterclockwise starting from the positive $\bar{x}$ axis.

Figure 12

Figure 12. Trajectory of the lowest point on the cylinder under different (a) grid refinement level and (b) width of the computational domain. The parameters are given as Wel = 15 and λρ = 1.2 (other parameters are listed in table 1).