No Arabic abstract
Volatile drops deposited on a hot solid can levitate on a cushion of their own vapor, without contacting the surface. We propose to understand the onset of this so-called Leidenfrost effect through an analogy to non-equilibrium systems exhibiting a directed percolation phase transition. When performing impacts on superheated solids, we observe a regime of spatiotemporal intermittency in which localized wet patches coexist with dry regions on the substrate. We report a critical surface temperature, which marks the upper bound of a large range of temperatures in which levitation and contact coexist. In this range, with decreasing temperature, the equilibrium wet fraction increases continuously from zero to one. Also, the statistical properties of the spatio-temporally intermittent regime are in agreement with that of the directed percolation universality class. This analogy allows us to redefine the Leidenfrost temperature and shed light on the physical mechanisms governing the transition to the Leidenfrost state.
The levitation of a volatile droplet on a highly superheated surface is known as the Leidenfrost effect. Wetting state during transition from full wetting of a surface by a droplet at room temperature to Leidenfrost bouncing, i.e., zero-wetting at high superheating, is not fully understood. Here, visualizations of droplet thermal and wetting footprint in the Leidenfrost transition state are presented using two optical techniques: mid-infrared thermography and wetting sensitive total internal reflection imaging under carefully selected experimental conditions, impact Weber number < 10 and droplet diameter < capillary length, using an indium-tin-oxide coated sapphire heater. The experimental regime was designed to create relatively stable droplet dynamics, where the effects of oscillatory and capillary instabilities were minimized. The thermography for ethanol droplet in Leidenfrost transition state (superheat range of 82K-97K) revealed thermal footprint with a central hot zone surrounded by a cooler periphery, indicative of a partial wetting state during Leidenfrost transition. High-speed total internal reflection imaging also confirmed the partial wetting footprint such that there are wetting areas around a central non-wetting zone. Result presented here using ethanol as a test fluid shed light on the geometry and dynamics of a volatile droplet footprint in Leidenfrost transition state.
A liquid droplet hovering on a hot surface is commonly referred to as a Leidenfrost droplet. In this study, we discover that a Leidenfrost droplet involuntarily performs a series of distinct oscillations as it shrinks during the span of its life. The oscillation first starts out erratically, followed by a stage with stable frequencies, and finally turns into periodic bouncing with signatures of a parametric oscillation and occasional resonances. The last bouncing stage exhibits nearly perfect collisions. We showed experimentally and theoretically the enabling effects of each oscillation mode and how the droplet switches between such modes. We finally show that these self-regulating oscillation modes and the conditions for transitioning between modes are universal for all tested combinations of liquids and surfaces.
Liquid oxygen, which is paramagnetic, also undergoes Leidenfrost effect at room temperature. In this article, we first study the deformation of oxygen drops in a magnetic field and show that it can be described via an effective capillary length, which includes the magnetic force. In a second part, we describe how these ultra-mobile drops passing above a magnet significantly slow down and can even be trapped. The critical velocity below which a drop is captured is determined from the deformation induced by the field.
The gasification of multicomponent fuel drops is relevant in various energy-related technologies. An interesting phenomenon associated with this process is the self-induced explosion of the drop, producing a multitude of smaller secondary droplets, which promotes overall fuel atomization and, consequently, improves the combustion efficiency and reduces emissions of liquid-fueled engines. Here, we study a unique explosive gasification process of a tricomponent droplet consisting of water, ethanol, and oil (ouzo), by high-speed monitoring of the entire gasification event taking place in the well-controlled, levitated Leidenfrost state over a superheated plate. It is observed that the preferential evaporation of the most volatile component, ethanol, triggers nucleation of the oil microdroplets/nanodroplets in the remaining drop, which, consequently, becomes an opaque oil-in-water microemulsion. The tiny oil droplets subsequently coalesce into a large one, which, in turn, wraps around the remnant water. Because of the encapsulating oil layer, the droplet can no longer produce enough vapor for its levitation, and, thus, falls and contacts the superheated surface. The direct thermal contact leads to vapor bubble formation inside the drop and consequently drop explosion in the final stage.
Conserved directed-percolation (C-DP) and the depinning transition of a disordered elastic interface belong to the same universality class as has been proven very recently by Le Doussal and Wiese [Phys. Rev. Lett.~textbf{114}, 110601 (2015)] through a mapping of the field theory for C-DP onto that of the quenched Edwards-Wilkinson model. Here, we present an alternative derivation of the C-DP field theoretic functional, starting with the coherent state path integral formulation of the C-DP and then applying the Grassberger-transformation, that avoids the disadvantages of the so-called Doi-shift. We revisit the aforementioned mapping with focus on a specific term in the field theoretic functional that has been problematic in the past when it came to assessing its relevance. We show that this term is redundant in the sense of the renormalization group.