Model for the fingering instability of spreading surfactant drops
- 16 July 1990
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 65 (3), 333-336
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.65.333
Abstract
We show that the Marangoni effect drives the fingering instability observed at the edge of an aqueous surfactant drop spreading on a thin film of water. A calculation of the unperturbed flow profile demonstrates that the spreading of the drop is controlled by the dynamics of a thin layer which develops in front of the drop. The surface-tension gradient in this region leads to the fingering instability via a mechanism mathematically similar to that in Hele-Shaw flow despite the very different underlying physics.This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
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