https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201714016001
Microgravity spreading of water spheres on hydrophobic capillary plates
1 Institute for Multiscale Simulation, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, 91052, Germany
2 Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
* e-mail: Michel.Louge@cornell.edu
Published online: 30 June 2017
We create nearly perfect centimetric spheres of water by splitting a cavity consisting of two metal hemispheres coated with a hydrophobic paint and under-filled with liquid, while releasing the apparatus in free-fall. A high-speed camera captures how water spread on hydrophobic aluminum and polycarbonate plates perforated with cylindrical capillaries. We compare observations at the ZARM drop tower in Bremen with Lattice-Boltzmann numerical simulations of Frank, Perré and Li for the inertial phase of imbibition.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
