Drip, drip, drip... onto a surface.

[Externet]

Which material, hardness, shape, porosity, tilt angle... would you say plain water dripping on it causes finer, more, farther reaching bounced droplets/splash ? (for a given height, say 1 metre)

Seems like more than calculating, would be empirical knowledge

(As to better ~evenly wet the surrounding area)

[Iggy]

Which material, hardness, shape, porosity, tilt angle... would you say plain water dripping on it causes finer, more, farther reaching bounced droplets/splash ? (for a given height, say 1 metre)

Seems like more than calculating, would be empirical knowledge

(As to better ~evenly wet the surrounding area)

 

I can't imagine where someone would find empirical research into water spatter, but I know there is a lot on blood spatter, and blood is probably a good surrogate for water, so...

 

...yeah, substitute "water" for "blood" in the following:

Free-Falling Drops on Horizontal Surfaces

As discussed in Chapter 4, a drop or drops of blood falling through air will retain their spherical shape and will not break up into smaller droplets unless the surface tension is disrupted by an external force such as an impact...

Theoretically, bloodstains that result from spherical free-falling drops of blood onto a horizontal surface are circular in shape. Their resulting diameters are a function of the volume of the drop, the distance fallen, and the surface texture on which it makes impact. On impact with smooth, hard, nonporous surfaces, the surface tension of blood drops will resist rupture and uniformly circular stains will be produced independent of the falling distance. Conversely, rough-textured or porous surfaces will disrupt the surface tension of blood drops and cause them to rupture on impact. The resultant bloodstains will exhibit distortion, irregular shapes, and spiny edges. Spines are the pointed-edge characteristics of a bloodstain that radiate away from the central area of the stain. In addition to spiny edges, the bloodstain may exhibit some secondary peripheral satellite spatter. It is important to understand that the degree of distortion and spattering of bloodstains resulting from free-falling drops is a function of the surface texture of the target rather than the distance fallen. Concrete, unpolished wood and fabric material are considered to be rough surfaces. Newspaper and tissue paper, although not considered rough surfaces, often exhibit very irregular and distorted bloodstains, whereas glass, porcelain, and tile, as well as hard smooth cardboard, exhibit the least distortion with respect to bloodstains on their surfaces. Figure 5.2a–j show examples of passive stains on various surfaces.

 

Principles of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis: Theory and Practice, p 71

 

That is interesting. I would have guessed the opposite. I would have guessed that hard and smooth surfaces (like a Teflon pan) would create the biggest splat, but it sounds like rough-textured and porous surfaces do better because they break the surface tension of the drop. Cool.

 

The book has pics and goes on to discuss non-horizontal surfaces.

[Enthalpy]

Water splatter is very important in cooling towers for power stations. This very mechanism makes the intimate contact between water and air.

 

But whether this data has been published is doubtful. The cooling tower is a very difficult part of a power station, its optimisation mean a bunch of bucks.

[Enthalpy]

North Korean build a new cooling tower to restart the Yongbyong nuclear reactor that produces weapon-ready plutonium from natural, hence little controllable, uranium.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22763278

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongbyon_Nuclear_Scientific_Research_Center

 

In this context, I feel better not to help over the Internet about the splatting of water drops in finer droplets, which is a key technology in cooling towers.