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When a droplet is placed on an inclined plane, it can slide down the plane by gravitational force. This phenomenon can occur in many industrial applications such as surface coating and printing, as well as in evaluating the characteristics of a surface. The slippery droplet can be analyzed from the balance between the gravitational force and the sum of the capillary and resistance forces. Researchers have suggested various equations of force balance with several hypotheses. To increase the reliability of the force balance correlation, it is important to obtain an accurate inside velocity profile and the three-dimensional (3D) shape of a droplet. In this paper, an analysis system of the slippery droplet was developed which includes optical correction based on a ray tracing method for velocity field measurement and an ellipse fitting method for droplet shape reconstruction. These correction methods were verified by a numerical simulation and applied to a slippery droplet on an inclined plate coated with Poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA). The wall shear force calculated from the velocity field and that calculated from the force balance were in good agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Electrospinning continuously produced twisted nanofibers with a convergence coil and a rotating ring collector. The positively charged nozzle was used in the electrospinning process to deposit electrospun fibers of polyacrylonitrile onto a rotating ring collector. By withdrawing the electrospun fibers from the rotating ring collector, it was possible to spin the electrospun fibers yarn. In this study, theoretical approaches and numerical simulations were used to determine the twisting angle of the yarn. Using the equations developed in this study, we performed numerical simulations and compared the experimental results with the numerical simulation results. Mechanical properties of the fiber bundle were analyzed for twisting angle. It was confirmed the relationship among the winding drum, the ring collector, and flux of the fibers mass per time during electrospinning in the developed system. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45528. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, thin‐film assembly at the liquid–air interface has been widely studied. These film scaffolds have high potential to control the crystallization process and fabricate single crystals. However, there have been limitations in understanding and controlling the behavior of polymer chains form into films. This study investigates thin‐film assembly at the hydrogel droplet interface with internal flow and its role. During the hydrogel film formation, the internal flow of the droplet is visualized using micro‐particle image velocimetry technique at various temperatures. From the droplet evaporation, convection flow induced by heat cause buoyancy effect and pressure on the interface film from evaporation flux affect the film morphology and its mechanical characteristics. Therefore, more dense assembled film is generated on the droplet interface. It is expected that the investigations could give better understanding of interface film assembly and controlling its properties. Hydrogel film assembly becomes denser and shows higher mechanical properties with controlling the evaporation at droplet air–liquid interface. Change of its nanoscaffold structures is measured with X‐ray diffraction scans and images are visualized by scanning electron microscopy. Further, internal flow inside the droplet during evaporation process is visualized with particle image velocimetry to analyze the effect at interface film assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For an electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jet, variables such as the direction of the meniscus and the ejection stability need to be analyzed. Thus, the EHD jet should be observed three-dimensionally (3D) because the variables can only be obtained in the 3D field, especially in unstable modes. However, if the 3D field is reconstructed from multi-directional binary images, eliminating reconstruction errors caused by invisible areas is almost impossible, even when using a tomographic technique. To solve this problem, a new 3D reconstruction method including an ellipse estimation was developed in this study. The method was verified by numerical simulation and applied to estimate the jetting flow rate and the direction of an ethanol droplet ejected from a nozzle according to a voltage.

In this Letter, a three-dimensional (3D) optical correction method, which was verified by simulation, was developed to reconstruct droplet-based flow fields. In the simulation, a synthetic phantom was reconstructed using a simultaneous multiplicative algebraic reconstruction technique with three detectors positioned at the synthetic object (represented by the phantom), with offset angles of 30° relative to each other. Additionally, a projection matrix was developed using the ray tracing method. If the phantom is in liquid, the image of the phantom can be distorted since the light passes through a convex liquid-vapor interface. Because of the optical distortion effect, the projection matrix used to reconstruct a 3D field should be supplemented by the revision ray, instead of the original projection ray. The revision ray can be obtained from the refraction ray occurring on the surface of the liquid. As a result, the error on the reconstruction field of the phantom could be reduced using the developed optical correction method. In addition, the developed optical method was applied to a Taylor cone which was caused by the high voltage between the droplet and the substrate.