On the dynamics of capillary rise: Dissipative mechanisms and non-linear oscillations
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The problem of penetration of liquid in a pore or a thin capillary has attracted the attention of researchers for more than one hundred years (see the pioneering work by Lucas and Washburn). It is important for industrial applications such as oil-recovery, but also for the development of mathematical theories of dynamic wetting. The latter is a very diverse and active area of research with a large variety of models. In particular, there is a whole hierarchy of models ranging from a very detailed description on the molecular scale, to continuum mechanical models based on the Navier-Stokes equations to complexity-reduced models formulated as ordinary differential equations. This talk will focus on complexity reduced models, their performance in explaining/predicting experimental data and their relation to more fundamental theories. In particular, we study the dynamics of oscillations during the capillary rise, a phenomenon which is observed for liquids of sufficiently low viscosity.
