High-gravity spreading of liquid puddles on wetting flexible substrates

Chen Yang, Adam Burrous, Jingjin Xie, Hassan Shaikh, Akofa Elike-Avion, Luis Rojas Rodriguez, Adithya Ramachandran, Wonjae Choi, Aaron D. Mazzeo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

This letter describes a mechanical approach of using high gravity to decrease the capillary length and increase the spreading rate of liquid puddles on wetting flexible substrates. By using centrifugation and a flexible substrate floating on a high-density liquid, uniform acceleration enhances the spreading of liquid puddles. Under high gravity of 600 g, the capillary length reduces by a factor of 24.5 to ∼60 μm. The reduction in capillary length results in gravity dominating the spreading of small puddles that would otherwise have slower spreading driven by both surface tension and gravity of 1 g. The resulting measurements suggest that derived expressions in the literature for gravity-driven spreading of puddles under earth's standard gravity extend to predicting the behavior of sufficiently large puddles spreading on flexible substrates exposed to more than 100 g of acceleration. This work explores the spreading of puddles/coatings under high gravity, and the techniques described in this work will allow further interrogation of the transition between surface tension- and gravity-driven spreading.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number074102
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume108
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 15 2016

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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