Bendocapillary Instability of Liquid in a Flexible-Walled Channel

Bradley, Alexander T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8381-5317; Hewitt, Ian J.; Vella, Dominic. 2023 Bendocapillary Instability of Liquid in a Flexible-Walled Channel. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 955, A26. 29, pp. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2022.1025

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Text (Open Access) © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), which permits re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is used to distribute the re-used or adapted article and the original article is properly cited. bendocapillary-instability-of-liquid-in-a-flexible-walled-channel.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract/Summary

We study the bendocapillary instability of a liquid droplet that part fills a flexible walled channel. Inspired by experiments in which a periodic pattern emerges as droplets of liquid are condensed slowly into deformable microchannels, we develop a mathematical model of this instability. We describe equilibria of the system, and use a combination of numerical methods and asymptotic analysis in the limit of small channel wall deflections, to elucidate the key features of this instability. We find that configurations are unstable to perturbations of sufficiently small wavenumber regardless of parameter values, that the growth rate of the instability is highly sensitive to the volume of liquid in the channel, and that both wetting and non-wetting configurations are susceptible to the instability in the same channel. Insight into novel interfacial instabilities opens the possibility for their control and thus exploitation in processes such as microfabrication.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2022.1025
ISSN:	0022-1120
Additional Keywords:	microfluidics, lubrication theory, capillary flows
Date made live:	06 Feb 2023 10:07 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/533425

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