UC Irvine

The droplet spreading and bouncing patterns on flat solid surfaces are investigated numerically and experimentally in this thesis. Various parameters are considered to study the droplet impacting behaviors including bottom surface contact angle, droplet diameter, droplet impacting velocity, and impact Weber number. According to the droplet impacting test of varying bottom surface contact angle, the theoretical model predicts both the numerical and experimental results of droplet maximum spreading area and droplet contact time with acceptable accuracy. The droplet maximum spreading area is found to be positively correlated with impact velocity and droplet initial diameter. The droplet contact time is found to be the only function of droplet mass and surface tension which will increase as the droplet size increases.