Thermal fluctuations of an interface near a contact line.

The effect of thermal fluctuations near a contact line of a liquid interface partially wetting an impenetrable substrate is studied analytically and numerically. Promoting both the interface profile and the contact line position to random variables, we explore the equilibrium properties of the corresponding fluctuating contact line problem based on an interfacial Hamiltonian involving a "contact" binding potential. To facilitate an analytical treatment, we consider the case of a one-dimensional interface. The effective boundary condition at the contact line is determined by a dimensionless parameter that encodes the relative importance of thermal energy and substrate energy at the microscopic scale. We find that this parameter controls the transition from a partial wetting to a pseudopartial wetting state, the latter being characterized by a thin prewetting film of fixed thickness. In the partial wetting regime, instead, the profile typically approaches the substrate via an exponentially thinning prewetting film. We show that, independently of the physics at the microscopic scale, Young's angle is recovered sufficiently far from the substrate. The fluctuations of the interface and of the contact line give rise to an effective disjoining pressure, exponentially decreasing with height. Fluctuations therefore provide a regularization of the singular contact forces occurring in the corresponding deterministic problem.

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of droplet formation in confined channels with thermocapillary flows.

Based on mesoscale lattice Boltzmann simulations with the "Shan-Chen" model, we explore the influence of thermocapillarity on the breakup properties of fluid threads in a microfluidic T-junction, where a dispersed phase is injected perpendicularly into a main channel containing a continuous phase, and the latter induces periodic breakup of droplets due to the cross-flowing. Temperature effects are investigated by switching on-off both positive-negative temperature gradients along the main channel direction, thus promoting a different thread dynamics with anticipated-delayed breakup. Numerical simulations are performed at changing the flow rates of both the continuous and dispersed phases, as well as the relative importance of viscous forces, surface tension forces, and thermocapillary stresses. The range of parameters is broad enough to characterize the effects of thermocapillarity on different mechanisms of breakup in the confined T-junction, including the so-called "squeezing" and "dripping" regimes, previously identified in the literature. Some simple scaling arguments are proposed to rationalize the observed behavior, and to provide quantitative guidelines on how to predict the droplet size after breakup.

Fluctuating multicomponent lattice Boltzmann model.

Current implementations of fluctuating lattice Boltzmann equations (FLBEs) describe single component fluids. In this paper, a model based on the continuum kinetic Boltzmann equation for describing multicomponent fluids is extended to incorporate the effects of thermal fluctuations. The thus obtained fluctuating Boltzmann equation is first linearized to apply the theory of linear fluctuations, and expressions for the noise covariances are determined by invoking the fluctuation-dissipation theorem directly at the kinetic level. Crucial for our analysis is the projection of the Boltzmann equation onto the orthonormal Hermite basis. By integrating in space and time the fluctuating Boltzmann equation with a discrete number of velocities, the FLBE is obtained for both ideal and nonideal multicomponent fluids. Numerical simulations are specialized to the case where mean-field interactions are introduced on the lattice, indicating a proper thermalization of the system.

Interaction pressure tensor for a class of multicomponent lattice Boltzmann models.

We present a theory to obtain the pressure tensor for a class of nonideal multicomponent lattice Boltzmann models, thus extending the theory presented by X. Shan [Phys. Rev. E 77, 066702 (2008)] for single-component fluids. We obtain the correct form of the pressure tensor directly on the lattice and the resulting equilibrium properties are shown to agree very well with those measured from numerical simulations. Results are compared with those of alternative theories.