Simulation of Latex Film Formation Using a Cell Model in Real Space: Vertical Drying

This paper presents a simulation tool applied to latex film formation by drying, a hybrid between a classical numerical resolution method using finite differences and cellular automata, and making use of object-oriented programming. It consists of dividing real space into cells and applying local physical laws to simulate the exchange of matter between neighboring cells. In a first step, the simulation was applied to the simple case of vertical drying of a latex containing only one population of monodisperse particles and water. Our results show how the distribution of latex particles evolves through the different drying stages due to a combination of diffusion, convection, and particle deformation. While repulsive interactions between the particles tend to favor homogeneous distributions in the first drying stage, concentration gradients that develop in opposite ways can be observed depending on the drying regime. The distributions, calculated in various cases, reproduce and extend several theoretical results and are in qualitative agreement with some experimental findings.