An algorithm for quantitatively modeling reflected ultrasonic bounded pulses and beams.

The study of the reflected acoustic waves plays an important role in our understanding of media. We provide an algorithm to propagate the ultrasonic bounded beam source and study its reflection from any horizontal and homogenous water-solid boundary. This algorithm implements a hybrid combination of the phase-advance wavefield continuation in the frequency domain and the complex analytic solution for the acoustic reflectivity. The peak amplitude of the specularly reflected beam is in agreement with the laboratory measured acoustic reflection from water-Aluminum and water-Copper alloy boundaries. The algorithm is able to model the observed critical reflection as well as the null in the reflected amplitude at the Rayleigh critical angle from the acoustic wave. This algorithm is a crucial tool to understand the full reflected wave from material immersed in water in any azimuthal or incidental angles. The software of this algorithm and acoustic reflectivity from both solid materials are provided.

Wetting at the nanoscale: A molecular dynamics study.

A novel method to calculate the solid-liquid contact angle is introduced in this study. Using the 3D configuration of a liquid droplet on a solid surface, this method calculates the contact angle along the contact line and provides an angular distribution. Although this method uses the 3D configuration of liquid droplets, it does not require the calculation of the 3D density profile to identify the boundaries of the droplet. This decreases the computational cost of the contact angle calculation greatly. Moreover, no presumption about the shape of the liquid droplet is needed when using the method introduced in this study. Using this method, the relationship between the size and the contact angle of water nano-droplets on a graphite substrate was studied. It is shown that the contact angle generally decreases by increasing the size of the nano-droplet. The microscopic contact angle of 83.0° was obtained for water on graphite which is in a good agreement with previous experimental and numerical studies. Neglecting other nanoscale effects which may influence the contact angle, the line tension of SPC/E (extended simple point charge model) water was calculated to be 3.6×10-11 N, which is also in good agreement with the previously calculated values.