Spreading dynamics of reactive surfactants driven by Marangoni convection

Abstract

We consider the spreading dynamics of some insoluble surface-active species along an aqueous interface. The model includes both diffusion, Marangoni convection and first-order reaction kinetics. An exact solution of the nonlinear transport equations is derived in the regime of large Schmidt number, where viscous effects are dominant. We demonstrate that the variance of the surfactant distribution increases linearly with time, providing an unambiguous definition for the enhanced diffusion coefficient observed in the experiments. The model thus presents new insight regarding the actuation of camphor grains at the water-air interface.

References in corpus (3)

• Viscous Marangoni propulsion
• Dynamics of a Camphoric Acid boat at the air-water interface
• Hydrodynamic signatures of stationary Marangoni-driven surfactant transport

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Effect of surface-active contaminants on radial thermocapillary flows
• Spontaneous motion of a camphor particle with a triangular modification from a circle
• On a simple model that explains inversion of a self-propelled rotor under periodic stop and release operations
• Surfactant-driven instability of a divergent flow
• Exact solutions for viscous Marangoni spreading