Daniels Nonlinear Lab

Surfactant-Driven Gel Fracture

The image at left was taken of a droplet of food coloring spreading within self-generated fractures at the surface of gel agar in a Petri dish. This is quite different from the circular way which surfactant-laden droplets spread on either solid or liquid surfaces, and is related to the fact that the gel substrate is a viscoelastic material which can fracture. We are studying how this instability arises from competition between the surface tension of the droplet and the elastic properties of the substrate. Such instabilities are important to understand in order to reliably work with non-Newtonian fluids in industrial and biomedical settings.

Publications

K. E. Daniels, S. Mukhopadhyay, P. J. Houseworth, and R. P. Behringer. Instabilities in droplets spreading on gels. Physical Review Letters 99 124501 (2007) [ Link ]

	Contact	News	Opportunities	People	Publications	Research