Droplet spreading and permeating on the hybrid-wettability porous substrates: a lattice Boltzmann method study

The spreading and permeation of droplets on porous substrates is a fundamental process in a variety of applications, such as coating, dyeing, and printing. The spreading and permeating usually occur synchronously but play different roles in the practical applications. The mechanisms of the competition between spreading and permeation is significant but still unclear. A lattice Boltzmann method is used to study the spreading and permeation of droplets on hybrid-wettability porous substrates, with different wettability on the surface and the inside pores. The competition between the spreading and the permeation processes is studied in this work from the effects of the substrate and the fluid properties, including the substrate wettability, the porous parameters, as well as the fluid surface tension and viscosity. The results show that increasing the surfacewettability and the porosity contact angle both inhibit the spreading and the permeation processes. When the inside porosity contact angle is larger than 90° (hydrophobic), the permeation process does not occur. The droplets suspend on substrates with Cassie state. The droplets are more easily to permeate into substrates with a small inside porosity contact angle (hydrophilic), as well as large pore sizes. Otherwise, the droplets are more easily to spread on substrate surfaces with small surface contact angle (hydrophilic) and smaller pore sizes. The competition between droplet spreading and permeation is also related to the fluid properties. The permeation process is enhanced by increasing of surface tension, leading to a smaller droplet lifetime. The goals of this study are to provide methods to manipulate the spreading and permeation separately, which are of practical interest in many industrial applications.