Evaporation of droplets: the effect of interaction between droplets and the existence of obstacles

The factors that affect the rate of evaporation of water droplets are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. We created a system that replicate the evaporation process of droplets by using the simplest liquid of all; water droplet. In this research, we investigate how the interaction between water droplets and the existence of obstacles affect the evaporation process. We compared the results of experiments and the simulation to check the accuracy of the simulation. Both experiment and simulation show that the greater the distance between two droplets, the higher the rate of evaporation. Furthermore, it is also shown that, the greater the effect of obstacles, the lower the rate of evaporation. On the other hand, we also investigate the relation between shape of droplets and the rate of evaporation using the 3D printer to make substrates of the same surface area. The results show that when the surface area and the volume of the water droplet are the constant variables, the factor that affects the rate of evaporation is the perimeter of the droplet. Since the regions near the contact line evaporate faster than any other parts of water droplet, we concluded that the longer the contact line, the higher the rate of evaporation.