Abstract
Wetting dynamics has not yet been well understood
for volatile droplets or
in the presence of evaporation and condensation.
We present its theoretical study in
the scheme of the dynamic van der Waals theory
recently presented $1$.
For a one-component fluid,
Figure 1 shows the velocity field around a liquid droplet
in its vapor spreading over a
substrate in the complete wetting condition.
The geometry is axisymmetric in 3D, with the vertical axis
being at the droplet center. In the simulation, the initial
temperature was at $T=0.875T_c$
throughout the system and the wall temperature
was held fixed.
As a remarkable feature, we can see
growth of a thin precursor film ahead
of the droplet $2$. It grows due to
condenstation at
the edge of the precursor film.
In the figure, we display
also the heat flux
$-T/z$
on the wall $z=0$, which is here negative
because of the latent heat absorbed by the wall.
On the other hand, when the wall is slightly heated,
evaporation of a liquid droplet
takes place most strongly at the contact
line with a larger apparent contact angle.
If the wall is strongly heated, a liquid droplet
is eventually detached from the wall
with a thin gas layer created between
the droplet and the wall.
In these examples
we notice relevance of convective
velocity carrying
latent heat. Generally,
in one-component fluids,
the temperature on the interface between gas and liquid
is nearly
on the coexisting curve $T=T_cx(p)$
at a given pressure $p$ even under heat flow.
However, this is not the case on
the edge line of the advancing precursor film
for the condensing case
and on the receding contact line for the evaporating case.
This means that the
Marangoni effect is not operative
away from the liquid-gas-solid contact
and the hydrodynamics is very singular.
In binary mixtures, on the other hand,
the flow pattern is drastically
influenced by the surface tension gradient
even at extremely small impurity concentration.
1) A. Onuki,
Phys. Rev. E 75, 036304 (2007).\\
2) P.G. de Gennes,
Rev. Mod. Phys. 57, 827 (1985).
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