Metamaterial Architectures for Programmable Droplet Motion

用于可编程液滴运动的超材料架构

• 批准号: 2211890
• 负责人: Stefano Gonella
• 金额: $ 49.95万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-11-01 至 2025-10-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2211890&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Metamaterial; Architectures; Programmable; Droplet; Motion

This grant supports fundamental research for controlling the motion of liquid droplets on solid surfaces. The problem of droplet control is relevant for numerous industrial applications, from self-drying surfaces and heat transfer via droplet condensation to water harvesting and biomedical analysis. Therefore, research in this direction can lead to discoveries with vast societal impact. Most strategies for droplet motion control involve doctoring, either chemically or mechanically, the surface that is in direct contact with the fluid, thus altering irreversibly its default properties. This project promotes a different paradigm that exploits the interaction between moving droplets and vibrating surfaces. The project idea revolves around the use of emerging notions of engineering metamaterials to design surfaces with spatially programmable vibrational response that allows to alter the available landscape of droplet motion on demand. In addition, the ability to couple metamaterials with fluidic motion will be exploited to design intuitive demonstration devices that allow visualizing, with the naked eye, complex elastic wave phenomena, making them ideal for scientific outreach and for teaching advanced engineering concepts.The technical objective of the project is to design vibrating metamaterials for programming the locomotion of liquid droplets on solid surfaces. Specifically, this research aims to realize control strategies that allow deep manipulation of the fluid motion when the vibrating state is on, while preserving the default system conditions in the off configuration. With resonant metamaterials, it is possible to modulate the vibrational response available in different regions of a surface. Through a proper interplay of structural design and excitation tuning, one can selectively program the onset of droplet depinning in select regions, thus spatially engineering the available landscape of droplet motion according to a virtually endless array of spatial patterns. Such design flexibility can be leveraged to program a variety of complex logic scenarios for droplet motion, such as clustering and segregation based on droplet size. The investigation is supported by a series of table-top experiments via laser vibrometry and high-speed imaging.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项拨款支持控制固体表面上液滴运动的基础研究。液滴控制问题与许多工业应用相关，从自干燥表面和通过液滴冷凝进行的传热到集水和生物医学分析。因此，这个方向的研究可以带来具有巨大社会影响的发现。大多数液滴运动控制策略都涉及到对与液滴直接接触的表面进行化学或机械处理，从而不可逆转地改变液滴的默认属性。这个项目提出了一个不同的范例，利用移动的液滴和振动表面之间的相互作用。项目理念围绕着使用新兴的工程超材料概念来设计具有空间可编程振动响应的表面，从而可以根据需要改变液滴运动的可用景观。此外，将超材料与流体运动耦合的能力将被利用来设计直观的演示设备，这些设备可以用肉眼可视化复杂的弹性波现象，使它们成为科学推广和先进工程概念教学的理想选择。该项目的技术目标是设计振动超材料，用于编程液体液滴在固体表面上的运动。具体而言，本研究旨在实现在振动状态开启时对流体运动进行深度操纵的控制策略，同时在关闭配置下保持系统的默认条件。使用共振超材料，可以调制表面不同区域的振动响应。通过适当的结构设计和激励调节的相互作用，人们可以选择性地在选定区域对液滴脱落的开始进行编程，从而根据几乎无穷无尽的空间模式阵列对液滴运动的可用景观进行空间工程。这种设计的灵活性可以用来为液滴运动编程各种复杂的逻辑场景，例如基于液滴大小的聚类和分离。这项研究得到了一系列通过激光振动测量和高速成像进行的桌面实验的支持。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。