Abstract:Droplets will cause the blade to bend and deform when impacting the blade, and this deformation will affect the droplet impact behavior. Based on the previous theoretical model of droplet impact on rigid surfaces, the influence of blade elasticity coefficient on droplet impact behavior when droplet impacted on flexible chili blades was investigated, and the mathematical prediction model of the maximum diffusion factor of droplet impact on flexible chili leaves was established by taking into account the elastic potential energy of blades, and the gravitational potential energy of droplets and blades. The reasonableness of the mathematical model was verified with droplet particle size, impact velocity, and the percentage of the distance from the impact point to the leaf tip as experimental variables. The results showed that all three factors had a significant effect on droplet adhesion and splashing (P<0.05). The prediction error of the mathematical model for the maximum diffusion factor of droplet impact on flexible chili leaves was within 10%. When the droplet impacted the flexible chili blade without rebound consistent with theoretical model predictions and the droplet adheres, the size of the blade’s elastic coefficient was negatively correlated with the time for the droplet to reach the maximum diffusion, and compared with the impact on the rigid fixed blade, the increase in time to reach the maximum diffusion was within 0.5ms, and the reduction rate of the maximum diffusion factor was within 25%, and the ratio of elastic potential energy to the total initial energy transferred to the blade showed a trend of decreasing and then increasing with the increase in the blade elasticity coefficient, which showed a tendency to decrease first and then increase. When the droplet splashed at 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% of the distance to the leaf tip, the splash critical value Kcrit was increased by 16.202%, 10.515%, 6.508%, 4.467%, respectively, compared with the splash value of the rigid blade,which indicated that the closer the leaf was to the region where the blade elasticity coefficient was small, the droplet would be less likely to splash. The research result can provide a method for the study of droplet impact behavior on flexible plant leaves and spray parameter selection.