Breakup of Thin Liquid Films: From Stochastic to Deterministic

Emmanouil Chatzigiannakis, Jan Vermant (Corresponding author)

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

37 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The thinning and rupture of thin liquid films is a ubiquitous process, controlling the lifetime of bubbles, antibubbles, and droplets. A better understanding of rupture is important for controlling and modeling the stability of multiphase products. Yet literature reports that film breakup can be either stochastic or deterministic. Here, we employ a modified thin film balance to vary the ratio of hydrodynamic to capillary stresses and its role on the dynamics of thin liquid films of polymer solutions with adequate viscosities. Varying the pressure drop across planar films allows us to control the ratio of the two competing timescales, i.e., a controlled hydrodynamic drainage time and a timescale related to fluctuations. The thickness fluctuations are visualized and quantified, and their characteristics are for the first time directly measured experimentally for varying strengths of the flow inside the film. We show how the criteria for rupture depend on the hydrodynamic conditions, changing from stochastic to deterministic as the hydrodynamic forces inside the film damp the fluctuations.

Original languageEnglish
Article number158001
Number of pages6
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume125
Issue number15
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Oct 2020
Externally publishedYes

Funding

The authors would like to thank Professor E. Dufresne (ETH Zürich) for stimulating comments and the ETH Energy Science Center Partnership with Shell for the financial support.

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