Numerical Investigation of Droplet Impact on Metallic Meshes

The present paper focuses on the numerical studies of droplets impinging onto metallic meshes, aiming to provide further insight, identify and quantify droplet impact characteristics that are difficult to be evaluated experimentally. For this purpose, an enhanced Volume-Of-Fluid (VOF) based numerical simulation framework, previously developed in the general context of OpenFOAM CFD Toolbox is utilised. In more detail, initially, validation studies of droplets impacting onto solid surfaces, previously reported in the literature are presented, for relatively high We numbers, in comparison to the ones tested in the past with the same model. Then, specific in-house experimental droplet impacts on metallic meshes are reproduced numerically, with satisfactory degree of agreement. Finally, the numerical model allows us to probe/study parameters difficult to reach experimentally, and perform a series of parametric numerical investigations in order to isolate, identify and quantify the effect of fundamental controlling parameters, such as the fluid viscosity, surface tension as well as the metallic surface wettability characteristics, on the resulting droplet impact dynamics.