Fringe probing of an evaporating microdroplet on a hot surface

The phenomenon of droplets impacting and evaporating on a hot surface is of interest in many areas of engineering. Quantitative measurement of these processes provides great help to reveal the physics behind. A novel technique was developed to quantitatively measure the volume evolution and contact diameter of an evaporating microdroplet on a hot surface utilizing interference fringe scattering method. In this method, fine fringes produced by the interference of two coherent laser beams was scattered by the droplet and projected onto a screen. The profile and volume of the droplet can be derived from the spatial fringe spacing on the screen. The number of total fringes measurable on the screen was used to determine the instantaneous contact diameter of the microdroplet. Validation experiments demonstrated that the measurement errors are less than ?5? and ±1?, for microdroplet volume and contact diameter, respectively. By using this method, the dynamic of droplet impingement, evaporation and boiling using ethanol, pure water and water solution of a surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate) with impact velocity of 7.5 m/s and diameters ranged from 0.19 to 0.46 mm were investigated. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved