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arXiv · 2411.09855

A Study of Spherical and Sessile Droplet Dynamics by Fluctuating Hydrodynamics

John B. Bell·Andrew Nonaka·Alejandro L. Garcia
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Abstract

We simulate the mesoscopic dynamics of droplets formed by phase separated fluids at nanometer scales where thermal fluctuations are significant. Both spherical droplets fully immersed in a second fluid and sessile droplets which are also in contact with a solid surface are studied. Our model combines a Cahn-Hillard formulation with incompressible fluctuating hydrodynamics; for sessile droplets the fluid-solid contact angle is specified as a boundary condition. Deterministic simulations with an applied body force are used to measure the droplets' mobility from which a diffusion coefficient is obtained using the Einstein relation. Stochastic simulations are independently used to obtain a diffusion coefficient from a linear fit of the variance of a droplet's position with time. In some scenarios these two measurements give the same value but not in the case of a spherical droplet initialized near a slip wall or in the case of sessile droplets with large contact angles (greater than 90 degrees) on both slip and no-slip surfaces.

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John B. Bell, Andrew Nonaka, Alejandro L. Garcia. 2024-11-15. A Study of Spherical and Sessile Droplet Dynamics by Fluctuating Hydrodynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09855

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