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Studying Surfactant Effects on Hydrate Crystallization at Oil-Water Interfaces Using a Low-Cost Integrated Modular Peltier Device
Published on: March 18, 2020
Two-dimensional numerical model of Marangoni surfers: From single swimmer to crystallization
Clément Gouiller1, Christophe Ybert1, Cécile Cottin-Bizonne1
1Institut Lumière Matière, Université de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, F-69622 Villeurbanne, France.
Abstract:
We numerically study the dynamics of an ensemble of Marangoni surfers in a two-dimensional and unconfined space. The swimmers are modeled as Gaussian sources of surfactant generating surface tension gradients and are shown to follow the Marangoni flow filtered at their spatial scale in the lubrication regime, an unstable situation leading to spontaneous motion as soon as the Marangoni effect is intense enough. As the system is fully unconstrained, it is possible to study the various dynamical regimes from single swimmer, two-body interaction, to the many-particles case characterized by an efficient particle dispersion. We show that, although the present model is very simple, it reproduces the experimentally observed transition between a regime of dispersion by random agitation when the number of swimmers is moderate to the regime of crystallization with imperfect hexagonal lattice at high density.
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