Surfactant spreading on liquid films in the Stokes regime

Characterizing the spreading of surfactants on the surface of a liquid film is central to our understanding of natural and technological processes ranging from cell propulsion and drug delivery in pulmonary airways to cleaning food processing surfaces. In this work, we analyze the spreading dynamics...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:AIP advances 2022-12, Vol.12 (12), p.125104-125104-6
Main Authors: Lu, Jiakai, Zhang, Qian, Ubal, Sebastian, Corvalan, Carlos M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Direct numerical simulation
Film thickness
Food processing
Liquid surfaces
Scaling
Surfactants
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Characterizing the spreading of surfactants on the surface of a liquid film is central to our understanding of natural and technological processes ranging from cell propulsion and drug delivery in pulmonary airways to cleaning food processing surfaces. In this work, we analyze the spreading dynamics of a drop of insoluble surfactants in a perfectly viscous (i.e., Stokes) regime. Using simple scaling arguments, we estimate that the size of a small surfactant drop grows as a power-law with time with an exponent of 1/3. The estimated scaling is then corroborated and better characterized using direct numerical simulations. Furthermore, the simulation results help establish the transition from the initial 1/3 scaling with time to the later 1/4 scaling that is expected when the spreading drop grows larger than the film thickness.
ISSN:2158-3226
2158-3226
DOI:10.1063/5.0125503