Related papers: Elastocapillary lifting and encapsulation of water…
The intriguing dynamics of a compound liquid-system comprising of water and (uncured) poly-dimethylsiloxane is explored in the present work. The viscoelastic nature of the film, coupled with the dynamics of evaporation, triggered a…
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…
Capillary forces acting at the surface of a liquid drop can be strong enough to deform small objects and recent studies have provided several examples of elastic instabilities induced by surface tension. We present such an example where a…
Flexible rings and rectangle structures floating at the surface of water are prone to deflect under the action of surface pressure induced by the addition of surfactant molecules on the bath. While the frames of rectangles bend inward or…
We consider the steady-state analysis of a pinned elastic plate lying on the free surface of a thin viscous fluid, forced by the motion of a bottom substrate moving at constant speed. A mathematical model incorporating elasticity,…
A liquid surface touching a solid usually deforms in a near-wall meniscus region. In this work, we replace part of the free surface with a soft polymer and examine the shape of this elasto-capillary meniscus, result of the interplay between…
We report surprising morphological changes of suspension droplets (containing class II hydrophobin protein HFBI from Trichoderma reesei and water) as they evaporate with a contact line pinned on a rigid solid substrate. Both pendant and…
We study the interaction of two parallel rigid cylinders on the surface of a thin elastic film supported on a pool of liquid. The excess energy of the surface due to the curvature of the stretched film induces attraction of the cylinders…
Thin elastic films can spontaneously attach to liquid interfaces, offering a platform for tailoring their physical, chemical, and optical properties. Current understanding of the elastocapillarity of thin films is based primarily on studies…
Water vapor capture through free surface flows plays a crucial role in various industrial applications, such as liquid desiccant air conditioning systems, water harvesting, and dewatering. This paper studies the dynamics of a silicone…
Recent studies demonstrated that an elastomer containing hygroscopic inclusions absorbs moisture and swell. Here we show that a thin film of such an elastomer bonded to a rigid substrate undergoes morphological instability upon absorption…
We report on the elastocapillary deformation of flexible microfibers in contact with liquid droplets. A fiber is observed to bend more as the size of the contacting droplet is increased. At a critical droplet size, proportional to the…
A hydrostatically stressed soft elastic film circumvents the imposed constraint by undergoing a morphological instability, the wavelength of which is dictated by the minimization of the surface and the elastic strain energies of the film.…
Passive and effective fluid capture and transport at small scale is crucial for industrial and medical applications, especially for the realisation of point-of-care tests. Performing these tests involves several steps including biological…
A homogeneous thin polymer film with a stepped height profile levels due to the presence of Laplace pressure gradients. Here we report on studies of polymeric samples with precisely controlled, spatially inhomogeneous molecular weight…
The mathematical model of a rotating electrohydrodynamic flow in a thin suspended liquid film is proposed and studied. The motion is driven by the given difference of potentials in one direction and constant external electrical field…
We study the effect of film density on the uniaxial compression of thin elastic films at a liquid--fluid interface. Using a combination of experiments and theory, we show that dense films first wrinkle and then fold as the compression is…
In recent years, there has been a considerable interest in the mechanics of soft objects meeting fluid interfaces (elasto-capillary interactions). In this work we experimentally examine the case of a fluid resting on a thin film of rigid…
We study the interaction between capillary forces and deformation in the context of a deformable capillary adhesive: a clamped, tense membrane is adhered to a rigid substrate by the surface tension of a liquid droplet. We find that the…
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…