Measure liquid surface tension by fitting lying droplet profile

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel, simple curve fitting method to measure liquid surface tension by deriving an exact droplet profile function from the Young-Laplace equation, eliminating the need for specialized instruments.

Contribution

The study introduces an exact droplet profile function for surface tension measurement, improving accuracy over approximate models and simplifying the process without additional instruments.

Findings

Derived an explicit droplet profile function from the Young-Laplace equation

Achieved more accurate surface tension measurements compared to existing methods

Method is simpler and does not require new instruments

Abstract

This study developed a simple method to measure liquid surface tension based on curve fitting technique. In this study, the explicit lying droplet profile function in terms of surface tension was derived by solving 2-D Young-Laplace equation exactly, and the derived profile function was superior to the existing approximate profile functions. By fitting the derived profile function with the detected droplet profile image data, the liquid surface tension was then obtained. The proposed method does not rely on any new instrument, it is quite different in principle and simpler than the traditional methods.