Stability of thin fluid films characterised by a complex form of effective disjoining pressure

DOI10.1017/JFM.2017.919zbMATH Open1419.76053arXiv1704.03919OpenAlexW3100577097MaRDI QIDQ5227044FDOQ5227044

Authors: M. A. Lam, L. Kondic, Linda Cummings 

Publication date: 5 August 2019

Published in: Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We discuss instabilities of fluid films of nanoscale thickness, with a particular focus on films where the destabilising mechanism allows for linear instability, metastability, and absolute stability. Our study is motivated by nematic liquid crystal films; however we note that similar instability mechanisms, and forms of the effective disjoining pressure, appear in other contexts, such as the well-studied problem of polymeric films on two-layered substrates. The analysis is carried out within the framework of the long-wave approximation, which leads to a fourth order nonlinear partial different equation for the film thickness. Within the considered formulation, the nematic character of the film leads to an additional contribution to the disjoining pressure, changing its functional form. This effective disjoining pressure is characterised by the presence of a local maximum for non-vanishing film thickness. Such a form leads to complicated instability evolution that we study by analytical means, including application of marginal stability criteria, and by extensive numerical simulations that help us develop a better understanding of instability evolution in the nonlinear regime. This combination of analytical and computational techniques allows us to reach novel understanding of relevant instability mechanisms, and of their influence on transient and fully developed fluid film morphologies.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03919

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zbMATH Keywords

thin filmscomplex fluidsnon-Newtonian flows

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Non-Newtonian fluids (76A05) Thin fluid films (76A20)

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Cited In (6)

• THE ROLE OF COMPOSITIONAL STRAIN IN THE INSTABILITY OF SOLID-FLUID THIN FILM INTERFACES
• Computing dynamics of thin films via large scale GPU-based simulations
• The effects of variable fluid properties on thin film stability
• Stability of a two-layer blown film coextrusion
• Generalized Newtonian and Herschel-Bulkley yield stress fluids pressure behavior near the tip of a sharp edge in thin film flows
• Dynamics of a condensing liquid film under conjoining/disjoining pressures

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