Scaling Laws for Spreading of a Liquid Under Pressure

TL;DR

This paper investigates how liquids spread between plates under pressure, revealing that the film thickness follows a load-dependent power-law and the contact area saturates over time, with differences across fluid-solid pairs.

Contribution

It provides experimental insights into the scaling laws governing liquid spreading under pressure for different fluid-solid combinations.

Findings

Film thickness varies as a load-dependent power-law.

Contact area saturates after a certain time.

Saturation area increases with load differently for each fluid-solid pair.

Abstract

We study squeeze flow of two different fluids (castor oil and ethylene glycol) between a pair of glass plates and a pair of perspex plates, under an applied load. The film thickness is found to vary with time as a power-law, where the exponent increases with load. After a certain time interval the area of fluid-solid contact saturates to a constant value. This saturation area, increases with load at different rates for different fluid-solid combinations.