Ganesh Meshram
Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur-721302, India
Sasidhar Kondaraju
School of Mechanical Sciences, IIT Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar-752050, India
In this paper, we present a numerical investigation of wetting transitions on different textured substrates and their influence on flow through textured microchannels using the
lattice Boltzmann method with D2Q9 and a pseudo-potential
single component multiphase model. Firstly, wettability and wetting transition are analysed in this work with the help of different contact angles for both smooth and textured surfaces, with different tenacity of the force of interaction between liquid and solid. The wettability of surfaces is simulated with water droplets in a 200×200 (lu) domain. Contact angles for different values of interaction strength have been validated qualitatively with the previous numerical results. Later, we analyse the flow through textured microchannel with different width, spacing, and the height of the textures to achieve the hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces which enable the partial slip at the liquid-gas interface. It is noted that partial slip depends on the different tenacities of the interaction forces and also generates vortex flow inside the cavities. It also enhanced the pressure drop due to the spacing between the textures, which boosts the slip near the liquid-gas interface, which helps to reduce total drag.