Nuclear Engineering Commons^™

Effect Of Fiber Orientation On Shape And Stability Of Air-Water Interface On Submerged Superhydrophobic Electrospun Thin Coatings, B. Emami, H. Vahedi Tafreshi, M. Gad-El-Hak, G. C. Tepper

Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Publications

To better understand the role of fiber orientation on the stability of superhydrophobicelectrospun coatings under hydrostaticpressures, an integro-differential equation is developed from the balance of forces across the air–water interface between the fibers. This equation is solved numerically for a series of superhydrophobicelectrospun coatings comprised of random and orthogonal fiber orientations to obtain the exact 3D shape of the air–water interface as a function of hydrostaticpressure. More important, this information is used to predict the pressure at which the coatings start to transition from the Cassie state to the Wenzel state, i.e., the so-called critical transition pressure. Our results indicate …