On a crime scene one of the main goals of the forensics is to reconstruct the crime.
Liquids and their properties play a big part in this. Can we distinguish whether a
stain was created by a droplet or by contact with a bloodied surface. We like to
know what a stain looks like when it is created by a droplet and to predict the visual
appearance of such a stain. The relation between the diameter of a falling droplet
and the maximum diameter of the droplet on the fabric, will be compared for known
values on a solid surface. But a liquid that is on the ground can come in contact with
a fabric from above. When this happens the liquid flows upward in the fabric due to
the spaces between the fibers. We would like to predict how high a liquid comes in a
fabric in relation to the spaces between the fibers. In this paper three experiments are
evaluated if the stains behave in agreement with other models of droplets on fibrous
materials.
Before any of these experiments a microscope is used to look up close at the used
fabrics in the experiments. Important properties of the fabric are the spaces between
the fibers and the diameter of the fibers. After this a high speed camera is used to
look at a falling droplet from a certain height from the side, the side view experi-
ments. Further are the top view experiments, where the high speed camera and the
microscope are used to look at the spreading of a droplet dropped with a pipette. The
third experiment is the wilhelmy experiment where a fabric hanging from a balance
comes in contact with a reservoir of liquid enabling the liquid to flow upwards. For
the top view and wilhelmy experiments the spreading speeds are compared.