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 language | English (US) |
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Article number | 074102 |
Journal | Applied Physics Letters |
Volume | 108 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 15 2016 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)