Capillary Flow with Surface Tension and Wall Adhesion

[saa_1973]

Hi,

I would like to know if capillary flow in microchannels can be modeled with Elmer which accounts for the surface tension and wall adhesion. What are the solvers which can be used for the same?

Regards,

A A Saha.

[raback]

Capillary flow is a difficult problem. Elmer has some Lagrangian and Eulerian free surface strategies which both can take into account the surface tension. The Lagrangian approach is much more accurate but it may be unfeasible due to large changes in geometry. The Eulerian approach (levelset) models the surface tension as a smeared delta function distributed over a few elements. For this reason the approach is not very accurate compared to the mesh density.

Unfortunately for wall adhesion there is to my knowledge no model in Elmer. I remember seeing the wall adhesion often parametrisized by the contact angle. However, a force would be better applicable with the transient Navier-Stokes equation. Would you have any reference on how to take into account the wall adhesion?

-Peter