Droplets Impacting Perpendicular Onto a Smooth Substrate:
Transition Temperature
Author: Carlos Erlan Olival Lima
Subject: Joining and Surface of Materials
Professor Masahiro Fukumoto
In the experiment it was observed the
morphology of the resulting splat for an
alumina-particle. The disk splat formed it
was formed without any initial solidification
of the splat, what indicates that the initial
solidification is not always a necessary
condition for flattening splashing, and the
wetting affects flattening at least as much as
solidification.
When it comes to the transition temperature,
it can be noticed that it decreases with the
increase in particle thermal conductivity.
Moreover, the slope of the curve in the
graphs is steeper when the transition
temperature is higher. While the interface
wettability, temperature, and viscosity of
particles were different for all material
couples, the linear relationship between the
transition temperature and particle thermal
conductivity can be observed. Another thing
that can be observed is that the higher
transition temperature corresponds to the
worst wetting at the splat/substrate interface.
Therefore, an initial solidified layer at the
bottom surface of the particle can exist even
for ceramic particles. Thus, the solidified
layer must affect the spreading of the liquid
material on the surface.
The solidification affects the flattening
behavior because the splat cooling depends
on the heat transfer rate through the initial
solidification layer between the wetting
ranging of both critical lines. However, the
wetting at the splat/substrate interface
seems to be the most dominant factor with
regard to the flattening of the thermal
sprayed ceramic particles.
In the experiment, the region between the
central disk and the splashed material
remains intact. It can be inferred from this
result that splashing is not due to the liquid
material flow on the substrate surface from
the impact point to the periphery, but to the
jetting away from the upper part of the
molten spreading material. They estimated
that the liquid material enlarged to the
maximum area and, when the kinetic energy
is fully dissipated, shrinkage occurred due
to surface tension. The flattening splashing
was thought to result from this shrinkage.
Another behavior is a possible substrate
melting by impact droplet. And with the
increase in substrate temperature, the splat
changes from highly splashed, flowerlike to
relatively contiguous morphology.
Measurements conducted along the history
show that when the surface temperature is
higher than the transition temperature, the
disk-shaped splats exhibit excellent contact
with the substrate (more than 80% of this
surface). On the contrary, splats collected
on substrates where the surface
temperature is lower than the transition
temperature presented just a small contact
area in the 10-20% range, with much bigger
grain sizes in the area of poor contact.