Related papers: How flowers catch raindrops
The impact of droplets on concave surfaces is poorly understood, although it is relevant to a mode of dispersal that has evolved independently in several species of plants and fungi. This mode relies on splash-cups, specialized organs that…
In microfluidic technologies, direct patterning of liquid without resorting to micromachined solid structures has various advantages including reduction of the frictional dissipation and the fabrication cost. This fluid dynamics video…
Studying water droplets is a rich lesson in fields of fluid dynamics, nonlinear systems, and differential equations. Understanding various physical aspects of raindrops can help us in understanding drop dynamics, rainfall density…
In nature, high-speed rain drops often impact and spread on curved surfaces e.g. tree leaves. Although a drop impact on a surface is a traditional topic for industrial applications, drop-impact dynamics on curved surfaces in natural…
Wind dispersal of seeds is one essential mechanisms for plants to proliferate and to invade new territories. In this paper we present a methodology that combines 3D-printing, a minimal theoretical model and experiments to determine the…
As a droplet impacts on a granular substrate, both the intruder and the target deform, during which the liquid may penetrate into the substrate. {These three aspects together distinguish} it from other impact phenomena in the literature. We…
The evolution of a single raindrop falling below a cloud is governed by fluid dynamics and thermodynamics fundamentally transferable to planetary atmospheres beyond modern Earth's. Here, we show how three properties that characterize…
Textured hydrophobic surfaces that repel liquid droplets unidirectionally are found in nature such as butterfly wings and ryegrass leaves and are also essential in technological processes such as self-cleaning and anti-icing. However,…
Would a raindrop impacting on a coarse beach behave differently from that impacting on a desert of fine sand? We study this question by a series of model experiments, where the packing density of the granular target, the wettability of…
Aeroponics or Soil-less agriculture is a relatively new and recent type of practice, where plants are grown without soil while nutrient-rich water is provided via an atomized spray system to the suspended roots. Spray nozzles are…
Appendages of seeds, fruits and other diaspores (dispersal units) are essential for their wind dispersal, as they act as wings and enable them to fly. Whirling fruits generate an auto-gyrating motion from their sepals, a leaf like…
The leaves of many plants are superhydrophobic, a property that may have evolved to clean the leaves by encouraging water droplets to bead up and roll off. Superhydrophobic surfaces can also exhibit reduced friction and liquids flowing over…
Laboratory experiments and theoretical modelling are conducted to determine the raindrop size distribution (DSD) resulting from distinct fragmentation processes under various upward airstreams. Since weather radar echoes are proportional to…
We present results showing how water drops, produced by ink-jet printing, spread on surfaces patterned with lattices of diamond or triangular posts. Considering post widths typically ~7 m and lattice spacings between 15-40 m, we observe…
The rich structures arising from the impingement dynamics of water drops onto solid substrates at high velocities are investigated numerically. Current methodologies in the aircraft industry estimating water collection on aircraft surfaces…
We have studied the splashing dynamics of water drops impacting granular layers. Depending on the drop kinetic energy, various shapes are observed for the resulting craters. Experimental parameters that have been considered are : the size…
We study rain water infiltration and drainage in a dry model sandy soil with superabsorbent hydrogel particle additives by measuring the mass of retained water for non-ponding rainfall using a self-built 3D laboratory set-up. In the pure…
Hypothesis: Evaporation of surfactant droplets on leaves is complicated due to the complex physical and chemical properties of the leaf surfaces. However, for certain leaf surfaces for which the evaporation process appears to follow the…
The dispersion of plant pathogens, such as rust spores, is responsible for more than 20% of global yield loss annually, and poses a significant threat to human health. However, the release mechanics of pathogens from flexible plant surfaces…
Secondary droplets produced by interactions between falling fluid drops and a liquid pool play a significant role in engineering applications and geophysical processes in nature. This study uses direct numerical simulations to investigate…