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Air entrainment by contact lines of a solid plate plunged into a viscous fluid
Antonin Marchand1, Tak Shing Chan, Jacco H Snoeijer
1Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes, UMR 7636 ESPCI -CNRS, Université Paris-Diderot, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75005, Paris.
Abstract:
The entrainment of air by advancing contact lines is studied by plunging a solid plate into a very viscous liquid. Above a threshold velocity, we observe the formation of an extended air film, typically 10 microns thick, which subsequently decays into air bubbles. Exploring a large range of viscous liquids, we find an unexpectedly weak dependence of entrainment speed on liquid viscosity, pointing towards a crucial role of the flow inside the air film. This induces a striking asymmetry between wetting and dewetting: while the breakup of the air film strongly resembles the dewetting of a liquid film, the wetting speeds are larger by orders of magnitude.
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