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Updated: Mar 9, 2026

Measuring the Interaction Force Between a Droplet and a Super-hydrophobic Substrate by the Optical Lever Method
Published on: June 14, 2019
Lattice Boltzmann Simulation of Droplets Impacting on Superhydrophobic Surfaces with Randomly Distributed Rough
1Key Laboratory of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of Education Ministry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and ‡State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
Abstract:
Superhydrophobic surfaces have attracted much attention in environmental control because of their excellent water-repellent properties. A successful design of superhydrophobic surfaces requires a correct understanding of the influences of surface roughness on water-repellent behaviors. Here, a new approach, a mesoscale lattice Boltzmann simulation approach, is proposed and used to model the dynamic behavior of droplets impacting on surfaces with randomly distributed rough microstructures. The fast Fourier transformation method is used to generate non-Gaussian randomly distributed rough surfaces, with the skewness and kurtosis obtained from real surfaces. Then, droplets impacting on the rough surfaces are modeled. It is found that the shape of droplet spreading is obviously affected by the distributions of surface asperity. Decreasing the skewness and keeping the kurtosis around 3 is an effective method to enhance the ability of droplet rebound. The new approach gives more detailed insights into the design of superhydrophobic surfaces.

