skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Piercing the water surface with a blade: Singularities of the contact line

Journal Article · · Physics of Fluids (1994)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4938171· OSTI ID:22482481
 [1];  [2]
  1. Kazan Federal University, Kazan 420008 (Russian Federation)
  2. Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634 (United States)

An external meniscus on a narrow blade with a slit-like cross section is studied using the hodograph formulation of the Laplace nonlinear equation of capillarity. On narrow blades, the menisci are mostly shaped by the wetting and capillary forces; gravity plays a secondary role. To describe a meniscus in this asymptotic case, the model of Alimov and Kornev [“Meniscus on a shaped fibre: Singularities and hodograph formulation,” Proc. R. Soc. A 470, 20140113 (2014)] has been employed. It is shown that at the sharp edges of the blade, the contact line makes a jump. In the wetting case, the contact line sitting at each side of the blade is lifted above the points where the meniscus first meets the blade edges. In the non-wetting case, the contact line is lowered below these points. The contours of the constant height emanating from the blade edges generate unusual singularities with infinite curvatures at some points at the blade edges. The meniscus forms a unique surface made of two mirror-symmetric sheets fused together. Each sheet is supported by the contact line sitting at each side of the blade.

OSTI ID:
22482481
Journal Information:
Physics of Fluids (1994), Vol. 28, Issue 1; Other Information: (c) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-6631
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English