No Arabic abstract
The spreading of liquid drops on soft substrates is extremely slow, owing to strong viscoelastic dissipation inside the solid. A detailed understanding of the spreading dynamics has remained elusive, partly owing to the difficulty in quantifying the strong viscoelastic deformations below the contact line that determine the shape of moving wetting ridges. Here we present direct experimental visualisations of the dynamic wetting ridge, complemented with measurements of the liquid contact angle. It is observed that the wetting ridge exhibits a rotation that follows exactly the dynamic liquid contact angle -- as was previously hypothesized [Karpitschka emph{et al.} Nature Communications textbf{6}, 7891 (2015)]. This experimentally proves that, despite the contact line motion, the wetting ridge is still governed by Neumanns law. Furthermore, our experiments suggest that moving contact lines lead to a variable surface tension of the substrate. We therefore set up a new theory that incorporates the influence of surface strain, for the first time including the so-called Shuttleworth effect into the dynamical theory for soft wetting. It includes a detailed analysis of the boundary conditions at the contact line, complemented by a dissipation analysis, which shows, again, the validity of Neumanns balance.
The contact angle that a liquid drop makes on a soft substrate does not obey the classical Youngs relation, since the solid is deformed elastically by the action of the capillary forces. The finite elasticity of the solid also renders the contact angles different from that predicted by Neumanns law, which applies when the drop is floating on another liquid. Here we derive an elasto-capillary model for contact angles on a soft solid, by coupling a mean-field model for the molecular interactions to elasticity. We demonstrate that the limit of vanishing elastic modulus yields Neumanns law or a slight variation thereof, depending on the force transmission in the solid surface layer. The change in contact angle from the rigid limit (Young) to the soft limit (Neumann) appears when the length scale defined by the ratio of surface tension to elastic modulus $gamma/E$ reaches a few molecular sizes.
Originating in the field of biomechanics, Fungs model of quasi-linear viscoelasticity (QLV) is one of the most popular constitutive theories employed to compute the time-dependent relationship between stress and deformation in soft solids. It is one of the simplest models of nonlinear viscoelasticity, based on a time-domain integral formulation. In the present study, we consider the QLV model incorporating a single scalar relaxation function. We provide natural internal variables of state, as well as a consistent expression of the free energy to illustrate the thermodynamic consistency of this version of the QLV model. The thermodynamic formulation highlights striking similarities between QLV and the internal-variable models introduced by Holzapfel and Simo. Finally, the dissipative features of compressible QLV materials are illustrated in simple tension.
A paradigm for internally driven matter is the active nematic liquid crystal, whereby the equations of a conventional nematic are supplemented by a minimal active stress that violates time reversal symmetry. In practice, active fluids may have not only liquid crystalline but also viscoelastic polymer degrees of freedom. Here we explore the resulting interplay by coupling an active nematic to a minimal model of polymer rheology. We find that adding polymer can greatly increase the complexity of spontaneous flow, but can also have calming effects, thereby increasing the net throughput of spontaneous flow along a pipe (a drag-reduction effect). Remarkably, active turbulence can also arise after switching on activity in a sufficiently soft elastomeric solid.
The complicated dynamics of the contact line of a moving droplet on a solid substrate often hamper the efficient modeling of microfluidic systems. In particular, the selection of the effective boundary conditions, specifying the contact line motion, is a controversial issue since the microscopic physics that gives rise to this displacement is still unknown. Here, a sharp interface, continuum-level, novel modeling approach, accounting for liquid/solid micro-scale interactions assembled in a disjoining pressure term, is presented. By following a unified conception (the model applies both to the liquid/solid and the liquid/ambient interfaces), the friction forces at the contact line, as well as the dynamic contact angle are derived implicitly as a result of the disjoining pressure and viscous effects interplay in the vicinity of the substrates intrinsic roughness. Previous hydrodynamic model limitations, of imposing the contact line boundary condition to an unknown number and reconfigurable contact lines, when modeling the spreading dynamics on textured substrates, are now overcome. The validity of our approach is tested against experimental data of a droplet impacting on a horizontal solid surface. The study of the early spreading stage on hierarchically structured and chemically patterned solid substrates reveal an inertial regime where the contact radius grows according to a universal power law, perfectly agreeing with recently published experimental findings.
Frictional properties of contacts between a smooth viscoelastic rubber and rigid surfaces are investigated using a torsional contact configuration where a glass lens is continuously rotated on the rubber surface. From the inversion of the displacement field measured at the surface of the rubber, spatially resolved values of the steady state frictional shear stress are determined within the non homogeneous pressure and velocity fields of the contact. For contacts with a smooth lens, a velocity dependent but pressure independent local shear stress is retrieved from the inversion. On the other hand, the local shear stress is found to depend both on velocity and applied contact pressure when a randomly rough (sand blasted) glass lens is rubbed against the rubber surface. As a result of changes in the density of micro-asperity contacts, the amount of light transmitted by the transparent multi-contact interface is observed to vary locally as a function of both contact pressure and sliding velocity. Under the assumption that the intensity of light transmitted by the rough interface is proportional to the proportion of area into contact, it is found that the local frictional stress can be expressed experimentally as the product of a purely velocity dependent term, $k(v)$, by a term representing the pressure and velocity dependence of the actual contact area, $A/A_0$. A comparison between $k(v)$ and the frictional shear stress of smooth contacts suggests that nanometer scale dissipative processes occurring at the interface predominate over viscoelastic dissipation at micro-asperity scale.