Droplet impingement dynamics in ink-jet deposition.

Ink-jet deposition enables more efficient, economic, scalable manufacturing for a wide variety of materials than other additive techniques. The impact of droplets onto a substrate is critical for accuracy control and optimisation of the droplet deposition process. However, most previous research about droplet impact focused on the spreading radius of the droplet, which does not provide enough information for manufacturing purposes. This paper presents a new measure of droplet shape characterisation so that the droplet deposition process can be optimised to build desired geometries. A dimensional analysis is conducted to reduce the number of parameters of the impact conditions. Then the shape evolution of a wide range of impact conditions is simulated with a validated numerical model. The effects of the dimensionless numbers on the shape evolution are examined and analysed. Successive multiple droplets impact is also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]