Related papers: Capillary leveling of stepped films with inhomogen…
The surface of a thin liquid film with nonconstant curvature is unstable, as the Laplace pressure drives a flow mediated by viscosity. We present the results of experiments on one of the simplest variable curvature surfaces: a stepped…
Surface tension-driven flow techniques have recently emerged as an efficient means of shedding light into the rheology of thin polymer films. Motivated by experimental and theoretical approaches in films bearing a varying surface…
Flow in thin films is highly dependent on the boundary conditions. Here, we study the capillary levelling of thin bilayer films composed of two immiscible liquids. Specifically, a stepped polymer layer is placed atop another, flat polymer…
A thin liquid film with non-zero curvature at its free surface spontaneously flows to reach a flat configuration, a process driven by Laplace pressure gradients and resisted by the liquid's viscosity. Inspired by recent progresses on the…
Thin viscous liquid films driven by capillarity are well described in the lubrication theory through the thin film equation. In this article, we present an analytical solution of this equation for a particular initial profile: a stepped…
We present experiments to study the relaxation of a nano-scale cylindrical perturbation at one of the two interfaces of a thin viscous free-standing polymeric film. Driven by capillarity, the film flows and evolves towards equilibrium by…
We report on the capillary-driven levelling of a topographical perturbation at the surface of a free-standing liquid nanofilm. The width of a stepped surface profile is found to evolve as the square root of time. The hydrodynamic model is…
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…
In this paper we propose several models that describe the dynamics of liquid films which are covered by a high concentration layer of insoluble surfactant. First, we briefly review the 'classical' hydrodynamic form of the coupled evolution…
Two decades of experimental research indicates that spatial confinement of glass-forming molecular and polymeric liquids results in major changes of their slow dynamics beginning at large confinement distances. A fundamental understanding…
We study here experimentally, numerically and using a lubrication approach; the shape, velocity and lubrication film thickness distribution of a droplet rising in a vertical Hele-Shaw cell. The droplet is surrounded by a stationary…
We study the capillary wave dynamics of a single viscoelastic supported film and of a double layer of immiscible viscoelastic supported films. Using both simple scaling arguments and a continuum hydrodynamic theory, we investigate the…
We compare the capillary levelling of a random surface perturbation on a thin polystyrene film with a theoretical study on the two-dimensional capillary-driven thin film equation. Using atomic force microscopy, we follow the time evolution…
We consider a colony of point-like self-propelled surfactant particles (swimmers) without direct interactions that cover a thin liquid layer on a solid support. Although the particles predominantly swim normal to the free film surface,…
We present a control-volume approach for deriving a simplified model for the gravity-driven flow of an axisymmetric liquid film along a vertical fiber. The model accounts for gravitational, viscous, inertial and surface tension effects and…
The capillary levelling of cylindrical holes in viscous polystyrene films was studied using atomic force microscopy as well as quantitative analytical scaling arguments based on thin film theory and self-similarity. The relaxation of the…
We report molecular dynamics simulation results on the equilibrium properties of polymer thin films adsorbed onto flat and curved substrates. We first systematically determine the contact angle of polymer droplets on flat substrates as a…
Recent experiments of thin films flowing down a vertical fiber with varying nozzle diameters present a wealth of new dynamics that illustrate the need for more advanced theory. We present a detailed analysis using a full lubrication model…
In this paper we consider a two-phase thin film consisting of two immiscible viscous fluids endowed with a layer of insoluble surfactant on the surface of the upper fluid. The governing equations for the two film heights and the surfactant…
The study of viscous thin film flow has led to the development of highly nonlinear partial differential equations that model how the evolution of the film height is affected by different forces. We investigate a model of interaction between…