Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 55 (2014) 150157

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Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/etfs

Experimental investigation of a drop impacting on wetted spheres

Gangtao Liang, Yali Guo, Xingsen Mu, Shengqiang Shen
Key Lab. of Ocean Energy Utilization and Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Numerous experiments were performed to investigate a heptane drop impact dynamics on wetted spheres using a high speed camera. Outcomes after impact include spreading at a low impact Weber number and splashing at a high value. Limits between the two outcomes can be greatly affected by the sphere-drop curvature ratio ranging in 0.0900.448. Additionally, the spreading process on wetted spherical surfaces is discussed in detail. The spreading factor dened as the ratio between the spreading area and the drop surface area can be increased by increasing the curvature ratio or by reducing liquid viscosity, while the effect of the increment in the Weber number is minor. It is found that the spreading factor follows a linear law with dimensionless time, which is conrmed by the butanol drop spreading as well. Finally, concerning different curvature ratios and uids, many coefcients with respect to the linear law are obtained to predict the spreading scale by regressing the experimental data. 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 26 December 2013 Received in revised form 15 March 2014 Accepted 16 March 2014 Available online 24 March 2014 Keywords: Drop impact Wetted sphere Spreading Splashing

1. Introduction The drop impact phenomenon is common in industry, such as drops impact on surfaces of heat transfer tubes in horizontal-tube falling lm evaporators [1], spraying cooling [2], ink jet printing [3], plasma spraying technique [4] as well as various re safety situations [5], etc. Rein [6] summarized the main studies focused on the liquid drop impact phenomenon and made comprehensive reviews about this subject. Some research in the public literature precisely inspires the present investigation. For the drop impact on dry solid surfaces, Fukai et al. [7] presented a theoretical study on the spreading process accounting for the surface tension, and obtained the recoiling occurrence and mass accumulation around the spreading lm periphery. Their results also show that the dependence of the maximum spreading radius on time is non-monotonic. Later, Fukai et al. [8] proposed another theoretical model, considered the presence of inertia, viscosity, gravitation, surface tension and wetting effects. Their theoretical model predicts well the deformation of the impacting drop, not only in the spreading phase, but also during recoiling and oscillation. Rioboo et al. [9,10] conducted many experiments and provided qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results show that outcomes after impact include splashing, rebound, partial rebound and deposition. The time evolution of the spreading factor is divided into four distinct phases: the kinematic phase, the spreading phase, the relaxation phase and the wetting/equilibrium phase. Xu
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 0411 84708464.
E-mail addresses: gtliang@126.com (G. Liang), zzbshen@dlut.edu.cn (S. Shen). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.expthermusci.2014.03.008 0894-1777/ 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

et al. [11] investigated the inuence of the surrounding gas pressure on splashing limits and found a striking phenomenon: splashing can be suppressed by decreasing the surrounding gas pressure. Afterwards, Xu et al. [12,13] reported the interplay between substrate roughness and the surrounding gas pressure. They associated two distinct types of splashing with each parameter: prompt splashing is due to surface roughness, while corona splashing is resulted from instabilities produced by the surrounding gas. Bi et al. [14] experimentally found that liquid viscosity plays a decisive role in the spreading process, and surface tension has a leading inuence on the recoiling process. Both the two properties jointly determine the oscillation characteristics. For a single drop impact on hot surfaces, Negeed et al. [15] discussed thermal properties of the hot surface and drop characteristics on the drop evaporation. Later, Negeed et al. [16,17] presented solidliquid contact time and the maximum drop spreading diameter, concerning effects of the surface roughness amplitude, the oxide layer thickness, the We, and surface superheat. In some industrial equipments, the impact target surfaces are not always planar. For example, in horizontal-tube falling lm evaporators, liquid drops impact on heat transfer tubes. The target surfaces are curved instead of planar. Concerning a drop impact on curved dry surfaces, Pasandideh-Fard et al. [18] simulated a 2 mm water drop impact on tubes with the diameter in 0.56.35 mm and low velocity of 1 m/s. They found that drops landing on the largest tube cling to the solid surface, but for smaller tubes, there are not enough surface areas for the liquid to remain attached, and drops fall off after impact, disintegrating into several smaller drops. Hung and Yao [19] studied experimentally water drops with a diameter

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Nomenclature A d h k Oh Ra Re t v We area, mm2 diameter, mm lm thickness, mm coefcient Ohnesorge number, l/(qrddrop)1/2 surface roughness, lm Reynolds number, qvddrop/l time, ms impact velocity, m/s Weber number, qv2ddrop/r

r s
U

surface tension, N/m dimensionless time, vt/ddrop spreading factor, As/Adrop sphere-drop curvature ratio, ddrop/dsphere

Greek symbols d dimensionless lm thickness, h/ddrop l liquid viscosity, Pa s q liquid density, kg/m3

Subscripts c critical drop liquid drop h horizontal s spreading sphere solid sphere v vertical

of 110680 lm impacting on isothermal cylindrical wires. Their results show that outcomes after impact include disintegration and dripping. Smaller drops are disintegrated if the incoming drops have high velocity or the wire diameter is small. Larger dripping drops are formed when the velocity is low or the wire diameter is large. Shen et al. [20] studied inuences of several dimensionless parameters on the drop deformation after impact on a two-dimensional round surface using lattice Boltzmann implementation of the pseudo-potential model. Four typical deformation processes can be found in their research: moving, spreading, nucleating and falling. In Chow and Attinger [21], the drop diameter was 80 lm and the target sphere diameter was in the range of 0.06 10 mm. Their visualization experiments show that the sphere curvature has no signicant inuences on the maximum spreading factor for a substrate-drop curvature ratio below 0.3. Hardalupas et al. [22] reported experiments on liquid drops with the diameter 160230 lm impacting on small solid spheres with the diameter 0.81.3 mm at impact velocity 613 m/s. They observed a retraction of the liquid crown at low drop impact velocity and disintegration from cusps located on the crown rim at high impact velocity. They also pointed out that the increase in the sphere curvature promotes the splashing onset. Bakshi et al. [23] reported experimental investigations of drops with the diameter 2.42.6 mm impacting onto a spherical target of 3.2 mm in diameter. Spatial and temporal variations of the lm thickness on the target surface were measured. Three distinct temporal phases of the lm dynamics are clearly visible from their experimental results: initial drop deformation, inertia dominating and viscosity dominating. However, the research above mentioned is limited to a drop impact on dry surfaces. For the impact on wetted surfaces, i.e., solid surfaces covered by thin liquid lms, a lot of work was also completed. Cossali et al. [24] and Motzkus et al. [25] dened the impact target as a thin liquid lm when the dimensionless lm thickness d varies in the range of 01. Rioboo et al. [26] found experimentally three outcomes including deposition, crown formation without splashing and splashing by varying impact velocity (0.443.14 m/ s), the drop diameter (1.423.81 mm) and the dimensionless lm thickness (0.0040.189). Particularly for a dimensionless lm thickness less than 0.02, crowns without splashing could almost no longer be observed. Okawa et al. [27] and Shi et al. [28] gained the same results by experiments and three-dimensional simulations. Cossali et al. [24] and Vander Wal et al. [29] associated splashing with the production of satellite drops separating from the crown liquid sheet after the impact, which were named as secondary drops. Cossali et al. [24] rstly distinguished two kinds of splashing: prompt splashing and delayed splashing. The prompt

splashing is associated with ejected drops from the crown edge when it is still advancing, while the delayed splashing occurs near or after the crown maximum expansion and is associated with the crown wall breakup. Motzkus et al. [30] also demonstrated outcomes of coalescence, prompt splashing and delayed splashing in their work. From the above reviews on a single drop impact phenomenon, we note that most impact targets are dry planar or curved surfaces, and studies focused on the impact on wetted surfaces are limited to planar wetted surfaces. Inspired by the above research, it is found that there are few studies especially focused on the impact dynamics for a single drop impinging on wetted curved surfaces. In the previous study [31], the outcomes after a single drop impact on wetted cylinders were presented. Later, the rebound and spreading processes were discussed in detail in [32]. However, the drop impact on cylinders is a three-dimensional problem. For a drop impact on wetted spheres with a two-dimensional geometry, the impact behavior is still unclear. Thus, in the present research, outcomes after a single heptane drop impact on wetted spheres are presented through experimental observations using a high speed camera. In addition, the spreading factor is analyzed, with respect to inuences of the We and the sphere-drop curvature ratio -. 2. Experimental apparatus and procedures The experimental apparatus is similar with that in [31], and shown in Fig. 1. The main components include a syringe, a hypodermic needle connected with the syringe by a latex tube to generate drops, a high speed camera, a wetted sphere, a xenon lamp used to provide illumination for photography, a light diffuser, and a data acquisition computer. A single drop can be formed by forcing the liquid in the syringe at a certain pressure through the stainless steel hypodermic needle. The needle is at tipped, with an inner diameter of 0.50 mm. The drop is formed at the tip of the needle and detaches when the gravity exceeds the surface tension force. The impact behavior is recorded by a Phantom V12.1 high speed camera with capacity of 106 frames per second, equipped with a 100 mm, f-2.8 Tokina macro lens. The camera is aligned horizontally. In order to obtain photographs with sufcient image resolution, the shooting speed is set as 10,000 frames per second, with 1024 512 pixels in each image. The back light method is employed in the experiments to expose the impact images and the cold light source is provided by a xenon lamp XD-300 with a power of 350 W. A light diffuser is used between the sphere and the xenon lamp to make the light

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Fig. 1. The schematic diagram of the experimental apparatus.

be distributed uniformly on the wetted spherical surface. Because the whole impact process occurs in a very short time, the trigger mode is selected as post trigger. Namely, after the drop impact on the wetted sphere, the trigger is launched, then the signal is delivered to the data acquisition computer and the impact process is recorded. Before each experiment, several drops are cleared away to ensure that the liquid remains free of any air bubbles. Seven spheres are adopted with the diameter ranging from 4 mm to 20 mm. The spheres are polished by the Cw 1500 silicon carbide electro coated abrasive paper to assure that the average roughness of the sphere surfaces Ra is less than 0.05 lm. Heptane is selected as the experimental uid. The drop diameter can be acquired by pixel analyzing and calibration is performed by using a reference substance. The software MATLAB 7.1 is used to fulll the pixel analyzing process. The drop is similar to an ellipse and the diameter is measured in both the horizontal and vertical directions. In Rioboo et al. [10], Stow and Hadeld [33], the equivalent diameter of the ellipse is 1/3 dened as (d2 . The equivalent diameter of the heptane drop hdv) is 1.79 mm. The uncertainty is 1 pixel, and the error is 0.025 mm, which corresponds to a 1.40% relative error of the real diameter. Hence, the sphere-drop curvature ratio is ranging from 0.090 to 0.448. The distance between the needle tip and the sphere is adjusted to vary drop impact velocity. The impact velocity v is derived by tracking the location of the drop centroid in two images with 0.5 ms time spacing before impact, which ranges from 0.19 m/s to 2.14 m/s with an accuracy of 0.05 m/s. Before the experiment, a thin liquid lm is spread on the sphere surface uniformly by using a high-quality painting brush. Both the drop and the lm are heptane in the experiments. When the liquid lm becomes stable and has a relatively uniform thickness, the experiment can be started. The thickness of the liquid lm is measured directly by comparing an image of the lm surface to a reference image of the dry sphere. Before each impact test, the preexisting lm thickness is measured by a SLR digital camera (Canon EOS 5D Mark II) with a larger resolution than the high speed one. The lm thickness is in the range 1233 lm with an accuracy 4 lm, depending on the sphere diameter. Fig. 2 shows the preexisting lm thickness at the impact point with different curvature ratios. It can be seen that the larger curvature ratio results in the smaller lm thickness, caused by the larger curvature of the sphere. Cossali et al. [24], Stow and Stainer [34] pointed out that, when the surface roughness is comparable with the pre-existing lm thickness, the roughness inuence becomes remarkable. However, the roughness 0.05 lm is much lower than the smallest lm thickness 12 lm. Besides, all the spheres are polished with the same type of the abrasive paper, so the roughness inuence is not considered in this research. In order to further verify the proposed linear rule of the spreading factor, the other uid of butanol is selected, the pre-existing lm thickness of which is also presented in Fig. 2. Some experiments are done with small impact velocity. Table 1 summarizes the liquid properties and

70 60 50

butanol heptane

h (m)

40 30 20 10 0 0.0
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5

Fig. 2. The pre-existing lm thickness.

experimental conditions adopted in the present study, whilst Table 2 presents ranges of dimensionless parameters. 3. Results and discussions 3.1. Outcomes after impact The number embedded in the following images is the evolution time with the unit ms. The time sequence 0.0 ms is set as the drop exactly contacts with the wetted surfaces. For the small impact We corresponding to - = 0.149, the drop spreading process can be observed in Fig. 3. When the drop touches the wetted spherical surface, liquid in the drop that rstly contacting with the wetted surface begins to ow around on the surface (0.4 ms). As the spreading continues, the periphery of the spreading lm extends outward continuously (1.6 ms). Namely, the surface area of the wetted sphere covered by the spreading lm becomes larger. Then the periphery becomes more and more inconspicuous and a stable lm is formed on the wetted sphere at last (11.0 ms). It is noted that the rebound phenomenon at the low impact We still does not occur for the heptane drop through many repeatable experiments. For the same curvature ratio, by increasing the impact We to a certain high value, the splashing phenomenon can be seen in Fig. 4. An extremely thin jet is generated immediately after impact in the region where the drop connects with the wetted spherical surface

Table 1 Liquid properties and experimental conditions. Liquid Heptane Butanol

r (N/m) l (Pa s)
0.0201 0.0201 0.000409 0.00295

q (kg/m3) ddrop (mm) h (lm) v (m/s)

684 810 1.79 1.82 1233 3661 0.192.14 0.341.46

G. Liang et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 55 (2014) 150157 Table 2 Ranges of dimensionless parameters. Liquid Heptane Butanol We 2279 8156 Re 5696406 170730 Oh 0.0026 0.0171

153

0.0900.448 0.0910.455 Fig. 5. Spreading of the heptane drop with - = 0.448 and We = 67.

(0.1 ms). Then the jet develops into an unobvious liquid sheet at 0.3 ms. However, this liquid sheet only sustains an extremely short duration and quickly cracks into many secondary drops (0.5 ms). By 0.9 ms, the sheet has collapsed completely. Thus, the splashing in Fig. 4 pertains to the typical prompt splashing dened in Cossali et al. [24], caused by low viscosity of the heptane drop. For the higher curvature ratio - = 0.448, the drop spreading process is presented in Fig. 5. Compared with Fig. 3, experimental observations in Fig. 5 suggest that the spreading qualitative behavior varies less with different curvature ratios. However, for the drop splashing in Fig. 6 with - = 0.448, it appears a few differences. In Fig. 6, the secondary drops are much smaller than that in Fig. 4. Moreover, the tiny secondary drops move horizontally after impact in Fig. 6. While in Fig. 5, the secondary drops scatter more irregularly. When splashing occurs, the critical impact velocity can be acquired by ne adjustment of the impact height. Fig. 7 shows curves of the critical Weber number Wec for heptane at different curvature ratios. It shows that the Wec decreases with the decrement in the curvature ratio when the curvature ratio is larger than 0.224, while for - < 0.224 the Wec varies little and almost keeps a constant 124. For the large curvature ratio, the sphere diameter is small, so there is drop downward slippage after impact along the wetted surface due to gravity. One part of the impact energy has not been applied to overcome the adverse effect of the ow resistance and surface tension force. Hence, more impact energy is required to attain the splashing occurrence, i.e., the Wec is high for the large curvature ratio. With the decrement in the curvature ratio, such downward slippage is alleviated, as a consequence the Wec is reduced. However, when the curvature ratio is less than 0.224, the wetted surface approximates to a planar surface and the curve effect fades away gradually. Hence, the Wec does not change with the curvature ratio. To make this interpretation be more conclusive, several splashing limits for a single drop impact on a horizontal liquid lm (- = 0) in the literatures are selected to make a brief comparison with the present results in Fig. 7. Refs. [3537] suggest that the splashing limits grow with the increment in the Oh or the viscosity. In Fig. 7 it is noted that for Oh = 0.0175 in Wang and Chen [35] and Oh = 0.0028 in Motzkus et al. [30], their thresholds are larger than Oh = 0.0026 in the present experiments with - < 0.224, while the critical value for Oh = 0.0018 in Asadi and Passandideh-Fard [37] is smaller than the present value. However, for the same Oh = 0.0026 in [37], their result agrees extremely well with the present one. Thus, when the curvature ratio is larger than

Fig. 6. Splashing of the heptane drop with - = 0.448 and We = 278.

450
Oh = 0.0026 Oh = 0.0175 Oh = 0.0026 Oh = 0.0018 Oh = 0.0028
Present experiments Wang and Chen(2000) Asadi and Passandideh-Fard (2009) Asadi and Passandideh-Fard (2009) Motzkus et al. (2011)

360

270

We c
180 90 0

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Fig. 7. Splashing limits of the heptane drop on wetted spheres.

0.224, the curve effect should be taken into account with respect to the splashing process. 3.2. Spreading factor The foremost parameter in drop spreading is the spreading magnitude. A broad spreading can be desired to enhance the transport phenomena between the drop and the substrate in some application aspects such as ink jet printing [38]. When the drop impinges on the horizontal surface, the spreading factor, which is dened as the ratio between the spreading lm diameter and the drop diameter, is used to measure the spreading magnitude [14], whereas for the inclined surface, back and front spreading factors are introduced [39]. However, when the drop spreads on the curved surface, it is inappropriate to use these parameters to measure the spreading because the contact surface is not planar anymore: it is a spherical cap. Thus, in this research, the spreading

Fig. 3. Spreading of the heptane drop with - = 0.149 and We = 47.

Fig. 4. Splashing of the heptane drop with - = 0.149 and We = 191.

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1.0

0.8

Fig. 8. The spreading model after impact.

hs/ t (m/s)

0.6

= 0.448 = 0.224 = 0.149 = 0.090

0.4

area instead of the spreading diameter is used here. Fig. 8 is the spreading model after impact, where the point O is the impact point, the points A and B determine the raised spreading rim and the point C is the foot point from O to the segment AB. The spreading height hs is the length of AB, so the spreading area As can be expressed as

0.2

0.0

10

t (ms)
Fig. 10. The specic value between hs and t with We = 4267.

As phs dsphere ;
and the spreading factor U is dened as

As : Adrop

The spreading factor in the following gures is only plotted if it can be clearly measured. Fig. 9 shows the spreading factor at different conditions. From Fig. 9(a)(c) it is found that the We has minor effects on the spreading factor in the present curvature ratio range, though some discrepancies emerge in Fig. 9(a) with - = 0.448, caused by the relatively shorter lifetime of the spreading lm. However, Fig. 9(d) shows that the curvature ratio effect is remarkable. When s is less than 0.7, the curvature ratio does not inuence U, while for s > 0.7, with the decreasing of the curvature ratio, the spreading factor is increased. It is considered that at the incipient stage, the

impact drop just spreads in a small region with the area about 12.5 mm2 and this curved region can be deemed as a at surface, so the spreading factors are almost the same with different curvature ratios. Nevertheless, after the initial stage, the effect of the curvature ratio becomes prominent. As described in introduction, the wetted surface is the solid surface covered by a very thin lm. If it is assumed that the impact point corresponds to the 0 included angle, when this pre-existing lm becomes relatively stable, the lm thickness increases with angles for the left or right hemisphere due to gravity. Taking - = 0.224 for example, at the angles 45, 90 and 135, the lm thickness is about 26 lm, 30 lm and 41 lm, respectively. The smaller curvature ratio means that there is enough space for the drop to spread on the upper position of the wetted sphere. While for the large curvature ratio, the

3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 0.0

We = 67 We = 116 We = 209
= 0.448

10
= 0.224

8 6

4 2 0

We = 8 We = 42 We = 87

0.3

0.6

0.9

1.2

1.5

(a)
10
= 0.112

(b)
12

heptane
9

8 6

4 2 0

6
= 0.448 = 0.224 = 0.149 = 0.090

We = 7 We = 38 We = 77

0 0 1 2 3 4 5

(c)

(d)

Fig. 9. The heptane spreading factor, (a)(c) the We effect with different curvature ratios and (d) the curvature ratio effect with We = 4267.

G. Liang et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 55 (2014) 150157

155

15

heptane
12 6

butanol

6 2 3 0

Fig. 11. Experimental data of the spreading factor for heptane.

Fig. 14. Experimental data of the spreading factor for butanol.

3.0

3.0

2.4

2.4

1.8

1.8

k
1.2 1.2 0.6 0.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Fig. 12. The k value for heptane.

Fig. 15. The k value for butanol.

spreading rim arrives at the lower position quickly, where the lm is thicker and the spreading lm will encounter more resistance, as a consequence the spreading expands slowly. Therefore, the spreading factor becomes larger with the decrement in the curvature ratio. It is also noted that the spreading factor almost increases linearly with dimensionless time in Fig. 9. To verify this linear law, the denition of the spreading factor in Eq. (2) is derived:

Substituting the impact velocity and time yields

hs dsphere ddrop
2

hs dsphere vt : v tddrop ddrop

Then combining the dimensionless time denition yields

dsphere

v ddrop

hs s: t

phs dsphere hs dsphere As : 2 Adrop pd2 ddrop drop

3.0
= 0.455

For the given curvature ratio and the impact We, the rst term from the equation right side in Eq. (5) is a constant. If the second term (hs/t) can keep a constant, the linear law of the spreading fac-

6.0

butanol
4.5

2.4 1.8

3.0
= 0.455 = 0.228 = 0.152 = 0.091

1.2 0.6 0.0 0.0

We = 37 We = 80 We = 130

0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2.0

1.5

0.0 0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

(a)

(b)

Fig. 13. The butanol spreading factor, (a) the We effect with - = 0.455 and (b) the curvature ratio effect with We = 3757.

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tor with time can be afrmed. Fig. 10 presents the specic value between hs and t with different curvature ratios. It suggests that the second term (hs/t) varies less with time and the value grows with the increasing of the curvature ratio. Hence, a linear spreading model for a drop impact on wetted spheres can be proposed in Eq. (6):

U ks;

is also veried by the derivation in the denition of the spreading factor. The k value corresponding to different curvature ratios is obtained by regressing the experimental data. To further conrm the linear rule, more experiments are conducted by adopting butanol as the experimental liquid. The trends are similar with that when the liquid is heptane, while the k value is smaller caused by its higher viscosity. Hence, the linear model proposed in this research is recommendable. Acknowledgement Support of the Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51336001) is gratefully acknowledged. References
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where k can be acquired by regressing the experimental data. Fig. 11 provides the spreading factor data in the present experimental range shown in Tables 1 and 2. Due to inuences of the curvature ratio, the data are scattered. Hence, it is not proper to t all the data by using one correlation. Based on this situation, more experiments are supplemented concerning different curvature ratios, in order to regress the k value for each curvature ratio by utilizing the linear model in Eq. (6). Fig. 12 shows the k value for heptane at different curvature ratios. It is found that the k value uctuates a little, but the overall trend is still increasing with the decrement in the curvature ratio. This result coincides well with that in Fig. 9(d). Many experiments are also performed by adopting butanol as the experimental uid due to the same surface tension with heptane, so that the linear rule of the spreading factor can be further conrmed. The experimental conditions are presented in Tables 1 and 2. These experiments are focused on the spreading process, so the impact velocity is low and the splashing process is not considered in this research. Fig. 13 shows the spreading factor for butanol at different conditions. The effects of the We and the curvature ratio are the same with that in Fig. 9: the spreading factor can be increased by decreasing the curvature ratio, while the We effect is minor. It is still found that the butanol spreading factor follows the linear rule with dimensionless time as well. Figs. 14 and 15 present the experimental data of the spreading factor and the k value for butanol. It can be seen that the k value in Fig. 15 is more inerratic than that in Fig. 12, while the k value still increases with the decrement in the curvature ratio. Thus, Figs. 14 and 15 well conrm the linear model proposed in Eq. (6) and this linear model is recommendable for the spreading process after a single drop impact on wetted spheres. Comparing Figs. 12 and 15, the k value for heptane is larger than that for butanol. Table 1 indicates that butanol viscosity is much higher than heptane viscosity. Higher viscosity means that more impact energy will be decreased by viscous dissipation when the drop spreads on the wetted surface, and the spreading extent is reduced a lot. Hence, the heptane spreading factor is larger than the butanol value. 4. Conclusions In this work, a series of experiments are performed focused on the less concerned investigation of a single liquid drop impact on the wetted spheres using a high speed camera. After the heptane drop impacting on the wetted sphere, spreading and splashing phenomena can be observed. The sphere-drop curvature ratio can greatly inuence the splashing thresholds: with the increment in the curvature ratio larger than 0.224, the critical We can be increased due to the drop downward slippage, while the critical We almost keeps a constant as the curvature ratio smaller than 0.224. The spreading process is quantitatively discussed in detail and the spreading factor dened as the ratio between the spreading area and the drop surface area is introduced to measure the spreading amplitude. Experimental results indicate that the spreading factor can be increased by decreasing the curvature ratio, while the We inuences are minor. The interesting linear model of the spreading factor with dimensionless time is proposed, which

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