No Arabic abstract
For a pendant drop whose contact line is a circle of radius $r_0$, we derive the relation $mgsinalpha={piover2}gamma r_0,(costheta^{rm min}-costheta^{rm max})$ at first order in the Bond number, where $theta^{rm min}$ and $theta^{rm max}$ are the contact angles at the back (uphill) and at the front (downhill), $m$ is the mass of the drop and $gamma$ the surface tension of the liquid. The Bond (or Eotvos) number is taken as $Bo=mg/(2r_0gamma)$. The tilt angle $alpha$ may increase from $alpha=0$ (sessile drop) to $alpha=pi/2$ (drop pinned on vertical wall) to $alpha=pi$ (drop pendant from ceiling). The focus will be on pendant drops with $alpha=pi/2$ and $alpha=3pi/4$. The drop profile is computed exactly, in the same approximation. Results are compared with surface evolver simulations, showing good agreement up to about $Bo=1.2$, corresponding for example to hemispherical water droplets of volume up to about $50,mu$L. An explicit formula for each contact angle $theta^{rm min}$ and $theta^{rm max}$ is also given and compared with the almost exact surface evolver values.
Liquid drops on soft solids generate strong deformations below the contact line, resulting from a balance of capillary and elastic forces. The movement of these drops may cause strong, potentially singular dissipation in the soft solid. Here we show that a drop on a soft substrate moves by surfing a ridge: the initially flat solid surface is deformed into a sharp ridge whose orientation angle depends on the contact line velocity. We measure this angle for water on a silicone gel and develop a theory based on the substrate rheology. We quantitatively recover the dynamic contact angle and provide a mechanism for stick-slip motion when a drop is forced strongly: the contact line depins and slides down the wetting ridge, forming a new one after a transient. We anticipate that our theory will have implications in problems such as self-organization of cell tissues or the design of capillarity-based microrheometers.
The friction felt by a speed skater is calculated as function of the velocity and tilt angle of the skate. This calculation is an extension of the more common theory of friction of upright skates. Not only in rounding a curve the skate has to be tilted, but also in straightforward skating small tilt angles occur, which turn out to be of noticeable influence on the friction. As for the upright skate the friction remains fairly insensitive of the velocities occurring in speed skating.
Active droplets swim as a result of the nonlinear advective coupling of the distribution of chemical species they consume or release with the Marangoni flows created by their non-uniform surface distribution. Most existing models focus on the self-propulsion of a single droplet in an unbounded fluid, which arises when diffusion is slow enough (i.e. beyond a critical Peclet number, $mbox{Pe}_c$). Despite its experimental relevance, the coupled dynamics of multiple droplets and/or collision with a wall remains mostly unexplored. Using a novel approach based on a moving fitted bispherical grid, the fully-coupled nonlinear dynamics of the chemical solute and flow fields are solved here to characterise in detail the axisymmetric collision of an active droplet with a rigid wall (or with a second droplet). The dynamics is strikingly different depending on the convective-to-diffusive transport ratio, $mbox{Pe}$: near the self-propulsion threshold (moderate $mbox{Pe}$), the rebound dynamics are set by chemical interactions and are well captured by asymptotic analysis; in contrast, for larger $mbox{Pe}$, a complex and nonlinear combination of hydrodynamic and chemical effects set the detailed dynamics, including a closer approach to the wall and a velocity plateau shortly after the rebound of the droplet. The rebound characteristics, i.e. minimum distance and duration, are finally fully characterised in terms of $mbox{Pe}$.
Active droplets emit a chemical solute at their surface that modifies their local interfacial tension. They exploit the nonlinear coupling of the convective transport of solute to the resulting Marangoni flows to self-propel. Such swimming droplets are by nature anti-chemotactic and are repelled by their own chemical wake or their neighbours. The rebound dynamics resulting from pairwise droplet interactions was recently analysed in detail for purely head-on collisions using a specific bispherical approach. Here, we extend this analysis and propose a reduced model of a generic collision to characterise the alignment and scattering properties of oblique droplet collisions and their potential impact on collective droplet dynamics. A systematic alignment of the droplets trajectories is observed for symmetric collisions, when the droplets interact directly, and arises from the finite-time rearrangement of the droplets chemical wake during the collision. For more generic collisions, complex and diverse dynamical regimes are observed, whether the droplets interact directly or through their chemical wake, resulting in a significant scattering.
Pathogens contained in airborne respiratory droplets have been seen to remain infectious for periods of time that depend on the ambient temperature and humidity. In particular, regarding the humidity, the empirically least favorable conditions for the survival of viral pathogens are found at intermediate humidities. However, the precise physico-chemical mechanisms that generate such least-favorable conditions are not understood yet. In this work, we analyze the evaporation dynamics of respiratory-like droplets in air, semi-levitating them on superhydrophobic substrates with minimal solid-liquid contact area. Our results reveal that, compared to pure water droplets, the salt dissolved in the droplets can significantly change the evaporation behaviour, especially for high humidities close to and above the deliquesence limit. Due to the hygroscopic properties of salt, water evaporation is inhibited once the salt concentration reaches a critical value that depends on the relative humidity. The salt concentration in a stable droplet reaches its maximum at around 75% relative humidity, generating conditions that might shorten the time in which pathogens remain infectious.