Spreading of a droplet on the fluid-fluid interface

Good afternoon everyone. Today I will be presenting you my work on the topic “Spreading of a
droplet on the fluid-fluid interface”.
The contents of the presentation will be as follows.
Introduction
As the title says that, a droplet is spreading on a fluid-fluid interface. It is a simple case of three
fluid system or ternary fluid system. So why do we have to study such systems?
To answer that question, let us see where studying such systems will help. By studying these
systems, we maybe can solve one of the biggest environmental issues; Oil spills. The area affected
by the oil spills can be contained, if an immediate action is taken by changing the surface tension
of nearby area which is unaffected by oil spill.
These studies can also be applied to standardize an ancient ayurvedic test called Taila Bindu
pariksha or Oil drop test, where the spreading pattern will help in diagnosing a person’s health
using that person’s urine. Here is a picture of oil droplet forming a sieve pattern. The person can
be diagnosed to have arthritis or some other incurable disease. Though this is just a diagnostic tool,
yet it can be a cost effective test if the test is standardized.
Also studying ternary system can help in understanding many biological process happening inside
our body and can be used to bio mimic the process. Here shown is a picture how the neutrophils
travel to the site of an injury or infection. This is also an example of ternary system with activity
included for droplet.
Thus studying ternary systems will help in developing new technologies and solutions for these
kind of challenges.
Now coming to mathematical model of the system. We have advection-diffusion equations, where
we solve /phi and /psi. /phi and /psi are called order parameters, which will distinguish between
the phases. The u is velocity and M/phi and M/psi are mobility parameters and /mu/phi and /mu/psi
are chemical potentials. Next we have Navier Stokes equation to solve for velocity and pressure
in the system. As you can see, there are extra three terms in the RHS part of NS equations. They
are the forces from interfaces.
We solve for the Diffuse interface method using method of lines and get /phi and /psi , which we
use to calculate velocities from NSE using Lattice Boltzmann method, then we update the
velocities in Diffuse interface method and thus this cycle continues. Thus these are solved
simultaneously.
Now coming to results part, before we see them, I will be explaining a small theory to understand
the results. Consider a half of the system and we have interfacial forces like this, we can write
force balance at the contact point. We call that force balance as Spreading coefficient. If S>0, it
means /gamma31 is higher compared to other two forces and thus it will pull the liquid in its
direction causing it to spread. Similarly if S<0, the droplet tries not to spread and takes a shape of
lens. And we can write the equation like this, where a and b will be ratios of interfacial tensions
with respect to the main interface. Then we can use these interfacial tensions to get the contact
angles with the help of Neumann’s triangle relation which is nothing but law of sines. I would like
to point out here, that the interface always tries to minimize its energy, so whenever one side of
interfaces faces less energy compared to other face, that side of the interface will try to pull itself
towards that low energy interface.
For S<0, if we plot a,b vs the contact angle,\alpha, we end up with a contour plot. Different colours
show the range of angles from 0 to 180. Now lets consider point 6 and see how the system for a=1
and b=1 i.e; if all the interfacial forces are same, will behave. It shows that the fluid 3 would like
to be in contact with fluid 1 as much as it wants with fluid 2 thus forming a lens of contact angle
120.
Here are some other cases, corresponding to these points shown on the contour plot.
So, I would like to conclude that, we could get the static drop shapes which could be verified with
Neumann’s triangle relation. Also, diffuse interface method is a promising model to study
evolution of drop shapes and though static shapes look similar, they could have different spreading
regimes.
Thank you.