Experimental study of dynamic contact angles on rough hydrophobic surfaces
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Updated: Feb 17, 2026

Measuring the Interaction Force Between a Droplet and a Super-hydrophobic Substrate by the Optical Lever Method
Published on: June 14, 2019
Alireza Mohammad Karim1, Jonathan P Rothstein2, H Pirouz Kavehpour1
1Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90025, USA.
Abstract:
Rough hydrophobic surfaces have many applications in industry and technology. An experimental study was done on the spreading dynamics of different concentrations of polyethylene glycol (PEG) solutions on rough Teflon plates with different roughness. The experiments were conducted using Wilhelmy plate method. The advancing dynamic contact angle was found to be weakly dependent of capillary number. However, the receding dynamic contact angle decreases with increasing capillary number. The degree of roughness on rough Teflon surface has an important role on dynamic contact angle. The dynamics of receding motion was found to follow the molecular-kinetic theory. A power law relation between the receding dynamic contact angle and the capillary number was also obtained.
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