arXiv subjects

Lorène Champougny

Publications and source records attributed to Lorène Champougny.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Fluid Mechanics of Splatter Painting

In splatter painting, a collection of liquid droplets is projected onto the substrate by imposing a controlled acceleration to a paint-loaded brush. This work aims at unraveling the physical phenomena at play in this widespread artistic technique. By characterizing the kinematics of the splattering action (brush flicking or tapping), we identify the main force driving liquid out of the tip of the brush (hair bundle). For real or simplified brushes, the amount of liquid expelled is measured for various liquid viscosities and imposed accelerations, among other parameters. Experimental trends are successfully captured by a physical model that reproduces two distinguished limits: an inertia-dominated flow and a viscous-dominated flow in an anisotropic porous medium with parallel pores. Beyond splatter painting, our analysis provides a framework to describe mechanical drying strategies for fibrous materials or porous structures.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2024

Interfacial dripping faucet: generating monodisperse liquid lenses

We present a surface analog to a dripping faucet, where a viscous liquid slides down an immiscible meniscus. Periodic pinch-off of the dripping filament is observed, generating a succession of monodisperse floating lenses. We show that this interfacial dripping faucet can be described analogously to its single-phase counterpart, replacing surface tension by the spreading coefficient, and even undergoes a transition to a jetting regime. This liquid/liquid/gas system opens perspectives for the study of the dynamics of emulsions at interfaces.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2021

Dip-coating flow in the presence of two immiscible liquids

Dip-coating is a common technique used to cover a solid surface with a thin liquid film, the thickness of which was successfully predicted by the theory developed by Landau & Levich and Derjaguin in the 1940's. In this work, we present an extension of their theory to the case where the dipping bath contains two immiscible liquids, one lighter than the other, resulting in the entrainment of two thin films on the substrate. We report how the thicknesses of the coated films depend on the capillary number, on the ratios of the properties of the two liquids and on the relative thickness of the upper fluid layer in the bath. We also show that the liquid/liquid and liquid/gas interfaces evolve independently from each other as if only one liquid was coated, except for a very small region where their separation falls quickly to its asymptotic value and the shear stresses at the two interfaces peak. Interestingly, we find that the final coated thicknesses are determined by the values of these maximum shear stresses.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2019

Wettability patterning in microfluidic devices using thermally-enhanced hydrophobic recovery of PDMS

Spatial control of wettability is key to many applications of microfluidic devices, ranging from double emulsion generation to localized cell adhesion. A number of techniques, often based on masking, have been developed to produce spatially-resolved wettability patterns at the surface of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) elastomers. A major impediment they face is the natural hydrophobic recovery of PDMS: hydrophilized PDMS surfaces tend to return to hydrophobicity with time, mainly because of diffusion of low molecular weight silicone species to the surface. Instead of trying to avoid this phenomenon, we propose in this work to take advantage of hydrophobic recovery to modulate spatially the surface wettability of PDMS. Because temperature speeds up the rate of hydrophobic recovery, we show that space-resolved hydrophobic patterns can be produced by locally heating a plasma-hydrophilized PDMS surface with microresistors. Importantly, local wettability is quantified in microchannels using a fluorescent probe. This "thermo-patterning" technique provides a simple route to in situ wettability patterning in closed PDMS chips, without requiring further surface chemistry.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

Ultrasound transmission through monodisperse 2D microfoams

While the acoustic properties of solid foams have been abundantly characterized, sound propagation in liquid foams remains poorly understood. Recent studies have investigated the transmission of ultrasound through three-dimensional polydisperse liquid foams (Pierre et al., 2013, 2014, 2017). However, further progress requires to characterize the acoustic response of better controlled foam structures. In this work, we study experimentally the transmission of ultrasounds through a single layer of monodisperse bubbles generated by microfluidics techniques. In such a material, we show that the sound velocity is only sensitive to the gas phase. Nevertheless, the structure of the liquid network has to be taken into account through a transfer parameter analogous to the one in a layer of porous material. Finally, we observe that the attenuation cannot be explained by thermal dissipation alone, but is compatible with viscous dissipation in the gas pores of the monolayer.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2018

Influence of evaporation on soap film rupture

Although soap films are prone to evaporate due to their large surface to volume ratio, the effect of evaporation on macroscopic film features has often been disregarded in the literature. In this work, we investigate experimentally the influence of environmental humidity on soap film stability. An original experiment allows to measure both the maximum length of a film pulled at constant velocity and its thinning dynamics in a controlled atmosphere for various values of the relative humidity $\RH$. At first order, the environmental humidity seems to have almost no impact on most of the film thinning dynamics. However, we find that the film length at rupture increases continuously with $\RH$. To rationalize our observations, we propose that the film bursting occurs when the thinning due to evaporation becomes comparable to the thinning due to liquid drainage. This rupture criterion turns out to be in reasonable agreement with an estimation of the evaporation rate in our experiment.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Dynamic stiffness of the contact between a carbon nanotube and a flat substrate in a peeling geometry

We study the physics of adhesion and the contact mechanics at the nanoscale with a peeling experiment of a carbon nanotube on a flat substrate. Using an interferometric atomic force microscope and an extended force modulation protocol, we investigate the frequency response of the stiffness of the nano-contact from DC to 20 kHz. We show that this dynamic stiffness is only weakly frequency dependent, increasing by a factor 2 when the frequency grows by 3 orders of magnitude. Such behavior may be the signature of amorphous relaxations during the mechanical solicitation at the nano-scale.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Life and death of not so "bare" bubbles

In this paper, we investigate how the drainage and rupture of surfactant-stabilised bubbles floating at the surface of a liquid pool depend on the concentration of surface-active molecules in water. Drainage measurements at the apex of bubbles indicate that the flow profile is increasingly plug-like as the surfactant concentration is decreased from several times the critical micellar concentration (cmc) to just below the cmc. High-speed observations of bubble bursting reveal that the position at which a hole nucleates in the bubble cap also depends on the surfactant concentration. On average, the rupture is initiated close to the bubble foot for low concentrations (< cmc) while its locus moves towards the top of the bubble cap as the concentration increases above the cmc. In order to explain this transition, we propose that marginal regeneration may be responsible for bubble rupture at low concentrations but that bursting at the apex for higher concentrations is driven by gravitational drainage.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

The break-up of free films pulled out of a pure liquid bath

In this paper, we derive a lubrication model to describe the non-stationary free liquid film that is created when a vertical frame is pulled out of a liquid reservoir at a given velocity. We here focus on the case of a pure liquid, corresponding to a stress-free boundary condition at the liquid/air interfaces of the film, and thus employ an essentially extensional description of the flow. Taking into account van der Waals interactions between the interfaces, we observe that film rupture is well-defined in time as well as in space, which allows us to compute the critical thickness and the film height at the moment of rupture. The theoretical predictions of the model turn out to be in quantitative agreement with experimental measurements of the break-up height of silicone oil films in a wide range of pulling velocities and supporting fiber diameters.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2014

Surfactant-induced rigidity of interfaces: a unified approach to free and dip-coated films

The behavior of thin liquid films is known to be strongly affected by the presence of surfactants at the interfaces. The detailed mechanism by which the latter enhance film stability is still a matter of debate, in particular concerning the influence of surface elastic effects on the hydrodynamic boundary condition at the liquid/air interfaces. In the present work, "twin" hydrodynamic models neglecting surfactant transport to the interfaces are proposed to describe the coating of films onto a solid plate (Landau-Levich-Derjaguin configuration) as well as soap film pulling (Frankel configuration). Experimental data on the entrained film thickness in both configurations can be fitted very well using a single value of the surface elasticity, which is in good agreement with independent measurements by mean of surface expansion experiments in a Langmuir through. The analysis shows how and when the soap films or dip coating experiments may be used to precisely and sensitively measure the surface elasticity of surfactant solutions.

cond-mat.soft↗