Effect of wetting behavior on generation of uniform aluminum droplets obtained by pneumatic drop-on-demand technique

Micro metal droplet is the basic building block of three-dimensional metal parts fabricated by micro droplet deposition manufacturing (MDDM) technique. In this paper, the effect of wetting behavior between liquid metal and spray nozzle on the generation of micro aluminum droplets produced by pneumatic drop-on-demand (DOD) technique was investigated by simulation and experiment. A finite element model of liquid-gas flow was established based on the improved level set method (LSM). Then the generation of micro liquid aluminum droplets under different wetting conditions was simulated. A series of spraying experiments were also performed on micro droplet deposition experiment platform. The results show that the generation and flight of micro aluminum droplets are influenced by wetting condition between liquid metal and the nozzle surface significantly. Additionally, the effect of wetting behavior on the droplet size was analyzed to achieve the smallest building block. It was found that the droplet radius decreased with the increase of contact angle exponentially, which agreed with the numerical calculation and experiment results. On this basis, a wettability criterion was proposed for selecting nozzle materials. These works would be helpful for the processing optimization and equipment improvement of MDDM technique.