1.
Phys Rev Lett
; 111(14): 144502, 2013 Oct 04.
Artigo
em Inglês
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-24138243
RESUMO
The coalescence of water drops on a substrate is studied experimentally. We focus on the rapid growth of the bridge connecting the two drops, which very quickly after contact ensues from a balance of surface tension and liquid inertia. For drops with contact angles below 90°, we find that the bridge grows with a self-similar dynamics that is characterized by a height h~t(2/3). By contrast, the geometry of coalescence changes dramatically for contact angles at 90°, for which we observe h~t(1/2), just as for freely suspended spherical drops in the inertial regime. We present a geometric model that quantitatively captures the transition from 2/3 to 1/2 exponent, and unifies the inertial coalescence of sessile drops and freely suspended drops.