A fluid-mechanical model of elastocapillary coalescence

We present a fluid-mechanical model of the coalescence of a number of elastic objects due to surface tension. We consider an array of spring-block elements separated by thin liquid films, whose dynamics are modelled using lubrication theory. With this simplified model of elastocapillary coalescence, we present the results of numerical simulations for a large number of elements, $N=O(10^4)$. A linear stability analysis shows that pairwise coalescence is always the most unstable mode of deformation. However, the numerical simulations show that the cluster sizes actually produced by coalescence from a small white-noise perturbation have a distribution that depends on the relative strength of surface tension and elasticity, as measured by an elastocapillary number $K$. Both the maximum cluster size and the mean cluster size scale like $K^{-1/2}$ for small $K$. An analytical solution for the response of the system to a localized perturbation shows that such perturbations generate propagating disturbance fronts, which leave behind `frozen-in' clusters of a predictable size that also depends on $K$. A good quantitative comparison between the cluster-size statistics from noisy perturbations and this `frozen-in' cluster size suggests that propagating fronts may play a crucial role in the dynamics of coalescence.