Molecular Hydrodynamics of the Moving Contact Line in Two-Phase Immiscible Flows

By Tiezheng Qian, Xiaoping Wang, P. Sheng. Communications in Computational Physics, 2005

133 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The no-slip boundary condition, i.e., zero fluid velocity relative to the solid at the fluid-solid interface, has been very successful in describing many macroscopic flows. A problem of principle arises when the no-slip boundary condition is used to model the hydrodynamics of immiscible-fluid displacement in the vicinity of the moving contact line, where the interface separating two immiscible fluids intersects the solid wall. Decades ago it was already known that the moving contact line is incompatible with the no-slip boundary condition, since the latter would imply infinite dissipation due to a non-integrable singularity in the stress near the contact line. In this paper we first present an introductory review of the problem. We then present a detailed review of our recent results on the contact-line motion in immiscible two-phase flow, from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to continuum hydrodynamics calculations. Through extensive MD studies and detailed analysis, we have uncovered the slip boundary condition governing the moving contact line, denoted the generalized Navier boundary condition. We have used this discovery to formulate a continuum hydrodynamic model whose predictions are in remarkable quantitative agreement with the MD simulation results down to the molecular scale. These results serve to affirm the validity ofthe generalized Navier boundary condition, as well as to open up the possibility of continuum hydrodynamic calculations of immiscible flows that are physically meaningful at the molecular level.

Subfields: Computational Mechanics, Materials Chemistry, Surfaces, Coatings and Films

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/17c219851e97b7f334e534a9643914f7087b906f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computational Mechanics

1. Chunfeng Zhou
2. James J. Feng
3. Pengtao Yue
4. Jie Shen

In Materials Chemistry

1. Pengtao Yue
2. James J. Feng

In Surfaces, Coatings and Films

1. Pengtao Yue
2. Chunfeng Zhou
3. James J. Feng

Citations in the corpus

• Sharp-interface limit of the Cahn–Hilliard model for moving contact lines (2010, background): “It is possible to introduce a slip velocity here (Qian et al. 2006b), which would allow more freedom in fitting the data and perhaps also a better representation of the true physics.”