Drop shape analysis for determination of dynamic contact angles by double sided elliptical fitting method

Contact angle measurements are a fast and simple way to measure surface properties and is therefore widely used to measure surface energy and quantify wetting of a solid surface by a liquid substance. In common praxis contact angle measurements are done with sessile drops on a horizontal surface fitted to a drop profile derived from the Young-Laplace equation.

When measuring the wetting behaviour by tilting experiments this is not possible since it involves moving drops that are not in equilibrium. Here we present a fitting technique capable of determining the contact angle of asymmetric drops with very high accuracy even with blurry or noisy images. We do this by splitting the trace of a drop into a left and right part at the apex and then fit each side to an ellipse.