Drop impact onto suspended and surface-attached metallic meshes:liquid penetration and spreading

The interaction between drops and porous matter has important applications in many fields such as painting, paper coating, filtration and drug delivery, the latter considering for example reconstructive surgery processes. Since the phenomenon of drop impact onto a porous surface is particularly complex, a first step consists in analysing impacts on 2D deterministic structures, such as metallic meshes. The present paper shows the cases of (i) drop impacts onto meshes attached to a solid substrate and (ii) drop impacts onto the same meshes but suspended without substrate. By analysing the impact of droplets of water, acetone and a mixture of glycerol and water on meshes with different pore sizes, three main outcomes were observed for both test cases: deposition, partial imbibition and penetration. A higher amount of liquid penetration is linked to a higher velocity impact, lower viscosity and a larger dimension of the pore size. An estimation of the liquid penetration is given in order to evaluate the impregnation properties of the meshes. For the case of attached meshes, a map of the regimes is proposed.