Deformation of an Elastic Substrate Due to a Resting Sessile Droplet

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical model to understand how a resting droplet deforms a soft elastic substrate, accounting for capillary forces, fluid pressure, and radial contact line forces, with implications for experimental testing.

Contribution

It introduces a Fourier transform solution that includes general interfacial energy conditions and radial forces, addressing a gap in modeling soft substrate deformation under droplets.

Findings

Radial contact line forces affect substrate deformation.

Including radial traction boundary conditions avoids strain singularities.

Model predicts displacement fields based on Poisson's ratio and contact forces.

Abstract

On a sufficiently-soft substrate, a resting fluid droplet will cause significant deformation of the substrate. This deformation is driven by a combination of capillary forces at the contact line and the fluid pressure at the solid surface. These forces are balanced at the surface by the solid traction stress induced by the substrate deformation. Young's Law, which predicts the equilibrium contact angle of the droplet, also indicates an a priori radial force balance for rigid substrates, but not necessarily for soft substrates which deform under loading. It remains an open question whether the contact line transmits a non-zero radial force to the substrate surface in addition to the conventional vertical force. We present an analytic Fourier transform solution technique that includes general interfacial energy conditions which govern the contact angle of a 2D droplet. This includes evaluating the effect of gravity on the droplet shape in order to determine the correct fluid pressure at the substrate surface for larger droplets. Importantly, we find that in order to avoid a strain singularity at the contact line under a nonzero radial contact line force, it is necessary to include a previously-neglected radial traction boundary condition. To quantify the effects of the contact line and identify key quantities that will be experimentally-accessible for testing the model, we evaluate solutions for the substrate surface displacement field as a function of Poisson's ratio and zero/non-zero radial contact line forces.