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NJIT Applied Mathematics Colloquium

Friday, February 19, 2010, 11:30am
Cullimore Lecture Hall II
New Jersey Institute of Technology

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The moving contact line problem and the spreading of liquid thin films

Weiqing Ren

Courant Insititute, NYU

In this talk, we will discuss a continuum model for the moving contact line problem derived through a combination of macroscopic and microscopic considerations. Macroscopic thermodynamic argument is used to place constraints on the form of the boundary conditions at the solid surface and the contact line. This information is then used to set up molecular dynamics to measure the detailed functional dependence of the boundary conditions. A new continuum model is obtained for the case of partial wetting as well as the case of complete wetting in a unified form. In the second part of the talk, we will discuss two main parameters and different spreading regimes identified from the analysis of the energy dissipations for the continuum model. Scaling laws in these different regimes will be derived. Then we derive boundary conditions for a simplified model for the spreading of liquid thin films. Numerical results will be presented for the thin film model, and the effect of the boundary condition will be investigated.