Forced flows in liquid bridges
Ilia V. Roisman, Mohammad Abboud, Philipp Brockmann, F. Berner, Rüdiger Berger, Pauline Brumm, Hans Martin Sauer, Edgar Dörsam, Jeanette Hussong
Abstract
Wetting of solid surfaces by liquid deposition, contact dispensing, drop transfer, collision of wet particles or during coating processes is often accompanied by the formation of liquid bridges between two or more solid substrates. They appear in many applications, like material science, microfluidics, biomedical, chemical or aerospace engineering, and different fields of physics. In this paper, the flows accompanying lifting of a Hele-Shaw cell, stretching or shearing of a liquid bridge as well as liquid bridge flows observed during printing processes and other important applications are briefly reviewed. Such flows are governed by surface tension, inertia, stresses associated with the liquid rheology, forces caused by the substrate wettability. Instabilities of liquid bridges lead to the formation of finger-like structures on the substrate or the appearance of cavities at the wetted region of the wall. The time required for jet pinch-off determines also the residual liquid volume on both solid bodies.