Application of Surface Wettability to Control Spreading of an Impacting Droplet

While the simplest outcome of a normal impact on a flat stationary solid surface is radially symmetric spreading, it is important to note that asymmetric spreading can intrinsically occur with a tangential velocity along the surface. However, no previous attempt has been made to restore the symmetry of a lamella that intrinsically spreads asymmetrically. Adjusting the lamella's asymmetric shape to a symmetric one is achieved in this work by varying wettability to affect the receding velocity of the contact line, according to the Taylor-Culick theory. Here we theoretically and practically show how restoring the symmetry can be achieved. Theoretically we built a framework to map the needed receding velocity at every given point of the contact line to allow for symmetry to be restored, and then this framework was applied to generate a wetting map that shows how at each local the wettability of the surface needs to be defined. Simulated results confirmed the effectiveness of our framework and identified the envelope of its applicability. Next, to apply the idea experimentally, the wetting map was transformed to a single wettability contrast area dubbed the "patch". Experimental results showed the effectiveness of the patch design in correcting the asymmetric spreading lamella for water droplets impacting a surface for the following Weber number conditions: We ≤ 300, We ≤ 300, and 0.51 ≤ We/We ≤ 2.04.