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Published on: April 17, 2015
Rotational motion of a droplet induced by interfacial tension
Ken H Nagai1, Fumi Takabatake, Yutaka Sumino
1Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan. nagai@daisy.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Abstract:
Spontaneous rotation of a droplet induced by the Marangoni flow is analyzed in a two-dimensional system. The droplet with the small particle which supplies a surfactant at the interface is considered. We calculated flow field around the droplet using the Stokes equation and found that advective nonlinearity breaks symmetry for rotation. Theoretical calculation indicates that the droplet spontaneously rotates when the radius of the droplet is an appropriate size. The theoretical results were validated through comparison with the experiments.
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