The work contained in this thesis presents four research manuscripts concerning the flow and motion of drops and bubbles in different geometries.
The first project explores the geometry of a totally wetting droplet on a conical fiber. A droplet on a fiber undergoes spontaneous motion toward the base of the fiber due to capillary forces, and viscous dissipation opposes the motion. In the first paper (Chapter 3), it was found that balancing the viscous shear force with the driving capillary force describes the motion of the droplet along the fiber. However, in nature, if fibers are coated with a liquid, there is rarely one droplet present; the second paper (Chapter 4) studies a conical fiber coated with multiple droplets. A liquid film coating a fiber will break up into droplets and it is found that the spacing of droplets depends on the shape of the fiber. The merging of droplets was studied and the dynamics well matches numerical simulations. The third paper (Chapter 5) studies the fluid film that a droplet will leave behind as it moves along the fiber. Using asymptotic matching to film deposition theory, this study found that the film thickness is affected by the curvature of the droplet. These studies show that the conical geometry and droplet curvature play an important role in droplet motion and film deposition.
The last project (Chapter 6) in this thesis concerns a chain of uniform sticky bubbles that rise through an aqueous bath. It is found that the chain of bubbles will buckle regularly as it moves through a liquid bath, much like a solid rope will buckle when impacting a surface. As the bubble chain rises through the bath, a compressive force develops due to an imbalance between the buoyancy of the chain and the viscous drag of the liquid surrounding it. Unlike solid ropes, there is no bending to stabilize the bubble chain and the regular buckling pattern is unex- pected. Using scaling arguments, it is found that the viscous bath both stabilizes the chain and introduces the compressive force. The geometry of the buckling can be described from a force balance between the compressive and stabilizing forces.
Drops and bubbles prove to be useful experimental tools to probe driven flow in different geometries and provide valuable insight into fundamental and applied physics systems. / Thesis / Doctor of Science (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/27768 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Lee, Carmen |
| Contributors | Dalnoki-Veress, Kari, Physics and Astronomy |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0085 seconds