Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

A Disjoining Pressure For Small Contact Angles And Its Applications, Qingfang Wu

LSU Master's Theses

A thin liquid film experiences additional intermolecular forces when the film thickness h is less than roughly 100 nm. The effect of these intermolecular forces at the continuum level is captured by the disjoining pressure . Since dominates at small film thicknesses, it determines the stability and wettability of thin films. To leading order, a thin film can be treated as uniform and . This form, however, cannot be applied to films with non-zero contact angles. A recent ad-hoc derivation to include the slope leads to a that allows a contact line to move without slip. This work derives a …