The geometry and wetting of capillary folding
Abstract
Capillary forces are involved in a variety of natural phenomena, ranging from droplet breakup to the physics of clouds. The forces from surface tension can also be exploited in industrial application provided the length scales involved are small enough. Recent experimental investigations showed how to take advantage of capillarity to fold planar structures into three-dimensional configurations by selectively melting polymeric hinges joining otherwise rigid shapes. In this paper we use theoretical calculations to quantify the role of geometry and fluid wetting on the final folded state. Considering folding in two and three dimensions, studying both hydrophilic and hydrophobic situations with possible contact angle hysteresis, and addressing the shapes to be folded to be successively infinite, finite, curved, kinked, elastic, we are able to derive an overview of the geometrical parameter space available for capillary folding.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1403.4499,
title = {The geometry and wetting of capillary folding},
author = {Jean-Philippe Péraud and Eric Lauga},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.4499},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
22 pages, 27 figures Permission to reuse the picture presented in Figure 1 was granted by the corresponding author, David H. Gracias, and by IOP Publishing Limited (evidence available upon request)