Modeling Contact Line Dynamics in Evaporating Menisci

J. Plawsky[1], A. Chatterjee[1], and P.C. Wayner Jr.[1]
[1]Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA
Published in 2009

The Constrained Vapor Bubble is a fundamental fluid mechanics experiment that is scheduled to run aboard the International Space Station starting in August 2009. The experiment is focused on looking at evaporation and condensation processes at the contact line, where vapor, liquid and solid meet. Our goal is to understand how processes that occur on the macroscale affect the transport processes occurring on the microscale.  The model was solved in COMSOL using a pair of general form PDE’s. One tracked the film thickness and the other the film curvature.

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