Sessile Drop Wettability in Normal and Reduced Gravity

International audienceThis paper presents initial work performed to develop a database of contact angles of sessile drops in reduced gravity. Currently, there is no database of wettability of sessile drops in reduced gravity. The creation of such a database is imperative for continued investigations of heat and/or mass transfer in reduced gravity and future engineering designs. In this research, liquid drops of water and ethanol were created on aluminum and PTFE substrates. The formed drops were characterized by their dimensions including contact angle, wetted perimeter and droplet shape in both normal gravity and reduced gravity. The droplets were recorded during testing with high definition video and the images obtained digitally analyzed, post-test, to determine their characteristics as a function of the experimental parameters. The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Drop Tower Facility was utilized for the reduced gravity experimentation. For droplets with diameters above their capillary length, the changes in drop dimensions and/or wettability was observed. The Young-Laplace equation was validated to accurately predict the contact angle in reduced gravity for small droplets, however it was not adequate to describe the contact angle for larger drops (above the drops associated capillary length)