Publication Date
2018
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Nikolai Priezjev (Advisor), Hong Huang (Committee Member), Sheng Li (Committee Member), Ahsan Mian (Committee Member)
Degree Name
Master of Science in Renewable and Clean Energy Engineering (MSRCE)
Abstract
In this thesis, the effects of the external pressure and surface energy on stability and wetting transition at nanotextured interfaces are studied using molecular dynamics and continuum simulations. The surface roughness of the composite interface is modeled via an array of spherical nanoparticles with controlled wettability. It was found that in the absence of external pressure, the liquid interface is flat and its location relative to the solid substrate is determined by the radius of the particle and the local contact angle. With increasing pressure on the liquid film, its interface becomes more curved and the three-phase contact line is displaced along the spherical surface but remains stable due to the re-entrant geometry. It was demonstrated that the results of molecular dynamics simulations for the critical pressure of the Cassie-Baxter wetting state agree well with the estimate of the critical pressure obtained by numerical minimization of the interfacial energy using Surface Evolver
Page Count
42
Department or Program
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Year Degree Awarded
2018
Copyright
Copyright 2018, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
