Drop morphologies on flexible fibers: influence of elastocapillary effects

TL;DR

This study explores how fiber flexibility influences liquid drop morphologies on crossed fibers, revealing new behaviors like fiber collapse and expanding the understanding of wetting phenomena in flexible fiber networks.

Contribution

It provides a model analysis of liquid morphologies on flexible fibers, identifying new behaviors and extending previous rigid fiber results to more realistic flexible systems.

Findings

Flexible fibers exhibit modified morphology domains compared to rigid fibers.

At small angles, fibers can bend and collapse, affecting liquid shape.

New behaviors include fiber collapse and varied liquid column formations.

Abstract

Various materials are made of long thin fibers that are randomly oriented to form a complex network in which drops of wetting liquid tend to accumulate at the nodes. The capillary force exerted by the liquid can bend flexible fibers, which in turn influences the morphology adopted by the liquid. In this paper, we investigate, the role of the fiber flexibility on the shape of a small volume of liquid on a pair of crossed flexible fibers, through a model situation. We characterize the liquid morphologies as we vary the volume of liquid, the angle between the fibers, and the length of the fibers. The drop morphologies previously reported for rigid crossed fibers, i.e., a drop, a column and a mixed morphology, are also observed on flexible crossed fibers with modified domains of existence. In addition, at small tilting angles between the fibers, a new behavior is observed: the fibers bend and collapse. Depending on the volume of liquid, a thin column with or without a drop is reported on the collapsed fibers. Our study suggests that the fiber flexibility adds a rich variety of behaviors that may be important for some applications.