Wetting effects on two-phase flow in a microchannel

In the recent years there has been an increasing interest in the study of two-phase flows in low Bond number systems (where capillary forces are important relative to gravitational forces). Such systems include capillary tubes and microchannels as well as the gas flow channels of a PEM fuel cell. At the capillary scale, surface tension forces play an important role in two-phase flow regime transitions, pointing out the need to take into account the geometry of the cross section and the surface properties (wet-tability). Surface tension is generally considered in flow transitions, but the wetting properties of the fluid-surface material pairs (contact angle) are rarely given any importance. The researchers investigating two-phase flows should take extreme care when choosing the material of the test sections, as the flow morphology and the the pressure drop accordingly can vary widely with contact angle. In order to show these morphological changes high speed visualization experiments of air-water flow through 500 μm square and round microchannels were conducted. For the round channels, contact angles of less than 20° (wetting) and 105° (non-wetting) were investigated. For the square section, things are complicated by the presence of the comers. According to the Concus-Finn criterion, the liquid will wick into (wet) the corner if the contact angle is less then 45°, or will de-wet the corner if the contact angle is above 45°. A new case not previously mentioned in the literature arises for a contact angle of 45° ≤ θ ≤ 90°, for which the liquid is wetting the walls but de-wetting the corners. Three contact angles of less than 20°, 80° and 105° are considered to investigate the possible morphologies in the square geometry. Images aquired with a high speed camera depicting the different flow morphologies that exist at the same air-water flow rates for each of the considered contact angle and geometry are presented. Copyright © 2007 by ASME