Contact lines on stretched soft solids: Modeling anisotropic surface stresses

Abstract

We present fully analytical solutions for the deformation of a stretched soft substrate due to the static wetting of a large liquid droplet, and compare our solutions to recently published experiments (Xu et al, Soft Matter 2018). Following a Green's function approach, we extend the surface-stress regularized Flamant-Cerruti problem to account for uniaxial pre-strains of the substrate. Surface profiles, including the heights and opening angles of wetting ridges, are provided for linearized and finite kinematics. We fit experimental wetting ridge shapes as a function of applied strain using two free parameters, the surface Lame coefficients. In comparison with experiments, we find that observed opening angles are more accurately captured using finite kinematics, especially with increasing levels of applied pre-strain. These fits qualitatively agree with the results of Xu et al, but revise values of the surface elastic constants.

References in corpus (8)

• Elastocapillarity: Surface Tension and the Mechanics of Soft Solids
• Universal deformation of soft substrates near a contact line and the direct measurement of solid surface stresses
• The Deformation of an Elastic Substrate by a Three-Phase Contact Line
• Static wetting on deformable substrates, from liquids to soft solids
• Soft wetting and the Shuttleworth effect, at the crossroads between thermodynamics and mechanics
• Surface energy of strained amorphous solids
• Strain-dependent solid surface stress and the stiffness of soft contacts
• The mechanical equilibrium of soft solids with surface elasticity

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Droplets sit and slide anisotropically on soft, stretched substrates
• Surface tension and the strain-dependent topography of soft solids
• Soft wetting with (a)symmetric Shuttleworth effect
• Gradients in solid surface tension drive Marangoni-like motions in cell aggregates
• Stick-Slip Contact Line Motion on Kelvin-Voigt Model Substrates
• Surface-Polyconvex Models for Soft Elastic Solids