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Capillarity in Fluid

Capillarity in Fluid

Capillarity describes the movement of liquid in small spaces without external forces acting on it. The capillarity is driven by surface tension and adhesive interactions between the liquid and surrounding solid surfaces. This effect is often seen in narrow tubes, porous materials, and fine particles.
Surface tension is crucial to capillarity. It results from cohesive forces between liquid molecules at the liquid-air boundary, forming a skin that resists external forces. When the capillary tube...

Phase Transitions: Vaporization and Condensation

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Surface Tension of Fluid

Surface Tension of Fluid

Surface tension is a fundamental property of fluids, occurring at the boundary between a liquid and a gas or between two immiscible liquids. This phenomenon arises from the cohesive forces between molecules at the fluid's surface, creating an effect similar to a stretched elastic membrane. Inside each fluid, molecules are equally attracted in all directions by neighboring molecules, but surface molecules experience a net inward force, resulting in surface tension.
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Cohesion

Cohesion

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Rise of Liquid in a Capillary Tube

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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

Published on: March 3, 2017

Capillarity driven instability of a soft solid.

Serge Mora¹, Ty Phou, Jean-Marc Fromental

¹Laboratoire des Colloïdes, Verres et Nanomatériaux, UMR 5587, Université Montpellier 2 and CNRS, Place Eugène Bataillon, F-34095 Montpellier Cedex, France. smora@univ-montp2.fr

Physical Review Letters

|January 15, 2011

Summary

We observed Plateau instability in solid gel filaments. Elastic forces compete with surface tension, creating a unique instability threshold dependent on material properties and filament radius.

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Area of Science:

Physics of soft matter
Fluid dynamics
Material science

Background:

Capillary instability drives surface area reduction in liquid filaments.
Elastic forces in solid materials can counteract surface tension-driven instabilities.
Previous studies have primarily focused on liquid systems.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the phenomenon of Plateau instability in solid gel filaments.
To analyze the interplay between capillary forces and elastic forces in solid materials.
To determine the theoretical threshold for instability in solid cylinders.

Main Methods:

Observation of instability in thin solid gel filaments with low elastic modulus.
Theoretical modeling of the competition between surface tension and elastic forces.
Comparison of experimental observations with theoretical predictions.

Main Results:

A Plateau instability was observed in solid gel filaments.
Elastic forces were found to counterbalance surface tension, modifying the instability.
A characteristic length scale, determined by the ratio of surface tension to elastic modulus, was identified.
The onset of linear instability was found to occur when the cylinder radius is one-sixth of this characteristic length scale.

Conclusions:

The competition between surface tension and elastic forces leads to a nontrivial instability threshold in solid cylinders.
The derived characteristic length scale accurately predicts the onset of Plateau instability in solid gels.
This study provides a theoretical framework and experimental validation for instability phenomena in solid materials.