Cooperative evaporation in two-dimensional droplet arrays

Khushboo Pandey, Sandeep Hatte, Keshav Pandey, Suman Chakraborty, and Saptarshi Basu
Phys. Rev. E 101, 043101 – Published 1 April 2020
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Abstract

The evaporation of a sessile drop in a gaseous environment may be critical to many practical applications. Evaporation dynamics of interacting sessile droplets is strongly influenced by the proximity of adjacent droplets. We study the effects of droplet-droplet vapor-mediated interactions on the evaporation lifetime of two-dimensional arrays of sessile water droplets. We observe that the presence of neighboring droplets acts as a mode of vapor accumulation which slows down the evaporation process. By considering an arbitrarily configured two-dimensional array of droplets, here we provide a simple generalized theoretical limit to their lifetime in an evaporating state. Using a scaling analysis, we put forward that the sessile droplet lifetime in a two-dimensional array is a linear function of the extent of confinement for various surface wettability and droplet geometric parameters (contact angle and contact radius). Notwithstanding the geometrical and physical complexity of the effective confinement generated due to their cooperative interactions, we show that the consequent evaporation characteristics may be remarkably insensitive to the topographical details of the overall droplet organization for a wide range of droplet-substrate combinations. With subsequent deployment of particle-laden droplets, however, our results lead to the discovery of a unique pathway towards tailoring the internal flows within the collective system by harnessing an exclusive topologically driven symmetry-breaking phenomenon, yielding a strategy of patterning particulate matters around the droplet array.

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  • Received 7 March 2019
  • Accepted 10 March 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.043101

©2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Research Areas
Fluid Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Khushboo Pandey1, Sandeep Hatte2, Keshav Pandey3, Suman Chakraborty4, and Saptarshi Basu1,3,*

  • 1Interdisciplinary Center for Energy Research (ICER), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India
  • 2Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA
  • 3Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India
  • 4Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India

  • *Corresponding author: sbasu@iisc.ac.in

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Issue

Vol. 101, Iss. 4 — April 2020

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