A numerical study on growth mechanism of dropwise condensation

Based on the intrinsic growth rate (R ∼ T1/3) of single droplet, processes of nucleation, growth, renucleation and sweeping of droplet are simulated in this paper. The influences of number of initial droplets on average radius, surface coverage and number of droplets on substrate are investigated. The simulation results show that the apparent growth rate of droplets is strongly dependent on the number of initial droplets. In addition, statistical fractal characteristic of droplet size distribution is found to be consistent with experimental measurements, and the drop size distribution is also found to be consistent qualitatively with that from experimental observations. The validity of the present simulations is thus verified. The present work may provide a great help in well understanding of the growth mechanism of dropwise condensation.