Symmetric and Asymmetric Coalescence of Drops on a Substrate

Abstract

The coalescence of viscous drops on a substrate is studied experimentally and theoretically. We consider cases where the drops can have different contact angles, leading to a very asymmetric coalescence process. Side view experiments reveal that the "bridge" connecting the drops evolves with self-similar dynamics, providing a new perspective on the coalescence of sessile drops. We show that the universal shape of the bridge is accurately described by similarity solutions of the one-dimensional lubrication equation. Our theory predicts a bridge that grows linearly in time and stresses the strong dependence on the contact angles. Without any adjustable parameters, we find quantitative agreement with all experimental observations.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Viscous to Inertial Crossover in Liquid Drop Coalescence
• Coalescence of sessile drops

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