Together with our collaborators from Civil Engineering, we are designing new superhydrophobic concrete pavements and we want to ensure that the hydrophobicity (water repellency) does not mean that the pavement is slippery in terms of traction / friction. Pavements and runways require high traction, although water-repellency is also desirable. Some researchers view these two requirements as contradictory, although perhaps they are not.
In our recent paper, we measure wetting and friction properties on novel hydrophobic ceramic tiles (which represent concrete pavement) and we show that hydrophobicity does not deteriorate frictional traction of such coated tiles against rubber.
S. Lanka, E. Alexandrova, M. Kozhukhova, Md Syam Hasan, M. Nosonovsky*, K. Sobolev, 2019, Tribological and wetting properties of TiO2 based hydrophobic coatings for ceramics Journal of Tribology doi:10.1115/1.4044178
