Surfacetensiondriven

Surfacetensiondriven (often written as surface-tension-driven) describes phenomena in which surface tension acts as the primary force that drives fluid motion and interface deformation. It commonly applies to flows near air-liquid or liquid-liquid interfaces, including capillary rise, droplet formation, jet breakup, spreading and wetting, and coating processes.

Key mechanisms include Laplace pressure from curvature, and Marangoni stresses from surface tension gradients caused by temperature changes or surfactant concentration differences. In micro- and nanoscale systems, viscous forces and interfacial phenomena dominate over inertia, making surface-tension-driven effects central. The Bond number and Capillary number quantify the relative importance of gravity and viscous forces to surface tension.

Examples and applications include inkjet printing droplet ejection, microfluidic droplet generation, thin-film coating and slot-die coating, self-assembly and wetting patterning, and emulsification. In research, surfacetensiondriven flows are studied with the Young-Laplace equation for the static pressure jump across a curved interface and with dynamic boundary conditions at the interface.

Modeling and measurement methods used to study surfacetensiondriven phenomena include computational approaches such as Volume of Fluid, Level Set, and Front-Tracking techniques to capture the moving interface and the associated surface tension forces. Experiments often rely on high-speed imaging and tensiometry to characterize interfacial properties and dynamic contact lines.