Droplet spreading on an oblique surface

Droplet spreading on a surface is ubiquitous in a variety of applications including aerospace, industry, and agriculture. Majority of these impacts are oblique, while previous studies focused on orthogonal impacts. Oblique impacts cannot be understood directly by previous theories and/or models. Evolution of film formation following a droplet impacting an oblique surface is investigated experimentally. Evolution of the film shape is obtained under various inclination angles and Weber numbers. Based on a new theory of droplet spreading on oblique surfaces, evolution of the film shape is analyzed. It is found that the film shape at small inclination angles can be predicted reasonably, but the error between the predicted maximum lamella width along the inclination direction and the experimental data is relatively big at large inclination angles since the length of the upstream lamella is assumed as a constant in the theory. Modifications of the theory including more detailed analysis of the length of the upstream lamella lead to an analytical model which permits the theoretical determination of the maximum lamella shape. It is shown that the error between the predicted results and the experimental results can be reduced from 61.8% by the previous theory to 3.2%.