A Surface Texture Design to Obstruct the Liquid Migration Induced by Omnidirectional Thermal Gradients.

Thermo-capillary migration is a phenomenon in which surface thermal gradients drive a liquid to flow from warm to cold regions without external forces. It is important to prevent the migration of liquid lubricants on rubbing surfaces. In this paper, a pattern of microdimples was proposed to obstruct the liquid migration induced by an omnidirectional thermal gradient. Microdimple patterns were fabricated on the surfaces of SUS316 stainless steel. Experiments were performed to investigate the influence of microdimple patterns with different geometric parameters on the migration behavior of paraffin oil. In particular, this study focused on the interfacial flowing near the microdimples. The results demonstrated that microdimples have a significant obstructive effect on migration, whereas dimples have a retaining effect, and the adjacent dimples have an interacting effect.