1. Modelling water droplet movement on a leaf surface
- Author
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Oqielat, Moa’ath N., Turner, Ian W., Belward, John A., and Mccue, Scott W.
- Subjects
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MATHEMATICAL models , *MATHEMATICAL functions , *THIN films , *APPROXIMATION theory , *CALIBRATION , *MATHEMATICAL analysis - Abstract
Abstract: Modelling droplet movement on leaf surfaces is an important component in understanding how water, pesticide or nutrient is absorbed through the leaf surface. A simple mathematical model is proposed in this paper for generating a realistic, or natural looking trajectory of a water droplet traversing a virtual leaf surface. The virtual surface is comprised of a triangular mesh structure over which a hybrid Clough–Tocher seamed element interpolant is constructed from real-life scattered data captured by a laser scanner. The motion of the droplet is assumed to be affected by gravitational, frictional and surface resistance forces and the innovation of our approach is the use of thin-film theory to develop a stopping criterion for the droplet as it moves on the surface. The droplet model is verified and calibrated using experimental measurement; the results are promising and appear to capture reality quite well. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2011
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