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Full-Text Articles in Physics
A Mean Curvature Model For Capillary Flows In Asymmetric Containers And Conduits, Yongkang Chen, Noël Tavan, Mark M. Weislogel
A Mean Curvature Model For Capillary Flows In Asymmetric Containers And Conduits, Yongkang Chen, Noël Tavan, Mark M. Weislogel
Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Capillarity-driven flows resulting from critical geometric wetting criterion are observed to yield significant shifts of the bulk fluid from one side of the container to the other during "zero gravity" experiments. For wetting fluids, such bulk shift flows consist of advancing and receding menisci sometimes separated by secondary capillary flows such as rivulet-like flows along gaps. Here we study the mean curvature of an advancing meniscus in hopes of approximating a critical boundary condition for fluid dynamics solutions. It is found that the bulk shift flows behave as if the bulk menisci are either “connected” or "disconnected." For the connected …
Compound Capillary Rise, Mark M. Weislogel
Compound Capillary Rise, Mark M. Weislogel
Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Irregular conduits, complex surfaces, and porous media often manifest more than one geometric wetting condition for spontaneous capillary flows. As a result, different regions of the flow exhibit different rates of flow, all the while sharing common dynamical capillary pressure boundary conditions. The classic problem of sudden capillary rise in tubes with interior corners is revisited from this perspective and solved numerically in the self-similar visco-capillary limit à laLucas–Washburn. Useful closed-form analytical solutions are obtained in asymptotic limits appropriate for many practical flows in conduits containing one or more interior corner. The critically wetted corners imbibe fluid away from …