Mesoscopic hydrodynamic model for spreading, sliding and coarsening compound drops

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive mesoscopic hydrodynamic model for the dynamics of compound drops, incorporating capillarity and wettability effects, and applies it to various spreading, sliding, and coarsening scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a fully consistent gradient dynamics model for compound drops, linking macroscopic and mesoscopic parameters, and distinguishes between long-wave and full-curvature variants for detailed analysis.

Findings

The model accurately describes spreading, sliding, and coarsening behaviors.

Qualitative changes in drop configurations are identified during different dynamic processes.

The full-curvature model captures complex interfacial phenomena in compound drops.

Abstract

We revisit the mesoscopic hydrodynamic description of the dynamics of sessile partially wetting compound drops, i.e., of drops that consist of two immiscible nonvolatile partially wetting liquids and are situated on a smooth rigid solid substrate. We briefly discuss and complete existing dynamic models employing a gradient dynamics approach. Thereby, the underlying energy features capillarity and wettability contributions for all relevant interfaces in full-curvature formulation. Establishing transparent consistency relations between macroscopic and mesoscopic parameters, we obtain mesoscopic Neumann and Young laws that are also fully consistent with the macroscopic ones. In particular, we discuss the minimal requirements for the wetting energy that ensure the full spectrum of macroscopic parameters {for partially wetting cases} is addressed by the mesoscopic model. Subsequently, we distinguish long-wave and full-curvature variants of the dynamical model based on properties of the energy, and employ the latter to illustrate the usage of the mesoscopic model. As examples, we chose the spreading of individual compound drops on one-dimensional horizontal substrates, sliding compound drops on one-dimensional inclined substrates, and the coarsening of drop ensembles on one- and two-dimensional horizontal substrates. In each case, the discussion emphasizes occurring qualitative changes in the drop configurations.