Absorption of surfactant-laden droplets into porous media: A numerical study.

HYPOTHESIS: Droplets can absorb into permeable substrates due to capillarity. It is hypothesized that the contact line dynamics influence this process and that an unpinned contact line results in slower absorption than a pinned contact line, since the contact area between the droplet and the substrate will decrease over time for the former. Furthermore, it is expected that surfactants can be used to accelerate the absorption. SIMULATIONS: Lubrication theory is employed to model the droplet and Darcy's law is combined with the conservation law of mass to describe the absorption dynamics. For the surfactant transport, several convection-diffusion-adsorption equations are solved. FINDINGS: It is found that moving contact lines result in a parabola-shaped wetted area and a slower absorption and a deeper penetration depth than pinned contact lines. The evolution of the penetration depth was quantitatively validated by comparison with two experimental studies from literature. Surfactants were shown to accelerate the absorption process, but only if their adsorption kinetics are slow compared to the absorption. Otherwise, all surfactant adsorbs onto the pore walls before reaching the wetting front, resulting in the same absorption rate as without surfactants. This behavior agrees with both experimental and analytical literature.

Numerical simulation of the drying of inkjet-printed droplets.

In this paper we study the behavior of an inkjet-printed droplet of a solute dissolved in a solvent on a solid horizontal surface by numerical simulation. An extended model for drying of a droplet and the final distribution of the solute on an impermeable substrate is proposed. The model extends the work by Deegan, Fischer and Kuerten by taking into account convection, diffusion and adsorption of the solute in order to describe more accurately the surface coverage on the substrate. A spherically shaped droplet is considered such that the model can be formulated as an axially symmetric problem. The droplet dynamics is driven by the combined action of surface tension and evaporation. The fluid flow in the droplet is modeled by the Navier-Stokes equation and the continuity equation, where the lubrication approximation is applied. The rate of evaporation is determined by the distribution of vapor pressure in the air surrounding the droplet. Numerical results are compared with experimental results for droplets of various sizes.