Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 41: Droplets and Wetting (joint session DY/CPP)

DY 41.1: Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2020, 15:00–15:15, ZEU 147

Coalescence of liquid droplets in a quasi 2D liquid films — •Christoph Klopp, Ralf Stannarius, and Alexey Eremin — Otto von Guericke University, Institute for Physics, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany

Coalescence of droplets plays a crucial role in nature and modern technology. Various experimental and theoretical studies explored droplet dynamics in 3D and on 2D solid or liquid substrates [1-3]. Here, we demonstrate coalescence of isotropic droplets in thin quasi 2D liquids, an overheated smectic A films. We investigated their dynamics experimentally and measured the shape deformation during the whole merging process using high-speed imaging. This system is a unique example, where the lubrication approximation can be directly applied, and the smectic membrane plays the role of the precursor film. Our studies reveal the scaling laws of the coalescence time depending on the droplet size and the material parameters. We also compared our results with existing models for liquid lens coalescence on liquid and solid surfaces.

[1] Paulsen et al., Coalescence of bubbles and drops in an outer fluid, Nat. Commun. 5, 3182 (2014)

[2] Aarts et al., Hydrodynamics of Droplet Coalescence, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 164503 (2005)

[3] Shuravin et al., Coalescence of viscous two-dimensional smectic islands, Phys. Rev. E 99, 062702 (2019)