Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Droplet Impact on a Hydrophobic 3D Elastic Surface

R Li and PZ Zhu and YM Xu and HS Lu and JC Rong, LANGMUIR, 39, 10280-10288 (2023).

DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c01519

The phenomenon of droplets impacting elastic surfacesis commonin nature and in many engineering applications. It has been shownthat droplet impact on an elastic surface drastically reduces dropletcontact time and hinders droplet spreading. However, most of the currentstudies are based on experiments, and the analysis of the influencemechanism of the elastic substrate on the dynamic behavior of dropletsis not complete. In addition, the simulations of droplet impact onelastic substrates are mainly focused on 2D elastic films or vibratingrigid substrates, ignoring the effect of 3D elastic substrate deformationon the droplet dynamic behavior. Therefore, in this paper, we proposeto model the droplet impact on a 3D hydrophobic elastic substrateusing the molecular dynamics method. We find that droplet pancakerebound can substantially reduce the droplet contact time. Moreover,we record the conditions required for the pancake rebound of the droplet.Furthermore, we investigated the effects of the elastic modulus ofthe substrate and the initial velocity of the droplet on the dropletcontact time, contact area, and spreading factor. This study furtherelucidates the influence mechanism of the elastic substrate on thedynamic behavior of the droplet and provides theoretical guidancefor regulating the dynamic behavior of the droplet in related fields.

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