Effects of Heat Transfer on the Spreading and Freezing of Molten Droplets Impinging Onto Textured Surfaces: A Computational Study

We present our recent study on spreading and solidification of micro-droplets of alumina impacting onto patterned surfaces textured by micron-size obstacles. We employed an in-house, three-dimensional computational tool that solves the flow and energy equations and takes into account the solidification. We investigated the spreading dynamics, heat transfer, and solidification of the droplets as a function of the height and spacing of the obstacles as well as the impact velocity. The results show that, independent of the obstacle height, the droplet assumes a disk-shape geometry when the obstacles are either packed tightly or are very distanced. The results at intermediate obstacle spacings exhibit the most significant deformations, where the droplet develops long fingers. A quantitative relationship shows the collapse of the final spread diameter of the droplet normalized by the obstacle spacing when plotted against the spacing for different impact velocity as well as the obstacle height.