Elastocapillary bending of microfibers around liquid droplets Journal Articles uri icon

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abstract

  • We report on the elastocapillary deformation of flexible microfibers in contact with liquid droplets. A fiber is observed to bend more as the size of the contacting droplet is increased. At a critical droplet size, proportional to the bending elastocapillary length, the fiber is seen to spontaneously wind around the droplet. To rationalize these observations, we invoke a minimal model based on elastic beam theory, and find agreement with experimental data. Further energetic considerations provide a consistent prediction for the winding criterion.

authors

  • Schulman, Rafael D
  • Porat, Amir
  • Charlesworth, Kathleen
  • Fortais, Adam
  • Salez, Thomas
  • Raphaël, Elie
  • Dalnoki-Veress, Kari

publication date

  • January 25, 2017