Numerical solutions of thin film equations for polymer flows
Abstract
We report on the numerical implementation of thin film equations that describe the capillary-driven evolution of viscous films, in two-dimensional configurations. After recalling the general forms and features of these equations, we focus on two particular cases inspired by experiments: the leveling of a step at the free surface of a polymer film, and the leveling of a polymer droplet over an identical film. In each case, we first discuss the long-term self-similar regime reached by the numerical solution before comparing it to the experimental profile. The agreement between theory and experiment is excellent, thus providing a versatile probe for nanorheology of viscous liquids in thin film geometries.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1210.8420,
title = {Numerical solutions of thin film equations for polymer flows},
author = {Thomas Salez and Joshua D. McGraw and Sara L. Cormier and Oliver Bäumchen and Kari Dalnoki-Veress and Élie Raphaël},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.8420},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in European Physical Journal E