Fundamental understanding of wetting dynamics

Wetting is a fundamental process that occurs when a drop of liquid meets a solid.The contact line, where solid, liquid and vapor meet, plays a central role in wetting.The challenge in modeling wetting processes is that the phenomena in nearly the whole domain are well desribed by continuum physics, while at the contact line the particle nature appears.With large-scale atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we have over the past years gained a deeper understanding of the relevant molecular processes when a single liquid is used.Now we will move to the more complex case of two liquids.We plan three main sub-projects.

The first concerns wetting of partially miscible liquids.Here MD results will transfer better to the continuum phase field model than the previously studied liquid-vapor cases.

By transferring all physical parameters from MD, we can properly validate phase field.The second sub-project is about non-Newtonian liquids. Because of high shear at the contact line, shear thinning liquids are important for technological applications.

With MD simulations we can resolve the important, unknown details close to the contact line that experiments can´t see.And finally we will study precursor films caused by a disjoining pressure.

These are used in many continuum models, but it is often questionable if this is realistic.Together, the results will provide fundamental insights in wetting of multi-component liquids and enable more accurate modeling at the continuum scale.