Eur. Phys. J. E (2020) 43: 2
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2020-11926-3

Regular Article

Non-axisymmetric elastohydrodynamic solid-liquid-solid dewetting: Experiments and numerical modelling

¹ Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
² Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

^* e-mail: a.a.darhuber@tue.nl

Received: 30 August 2019
Accepted: 20 December 2019
Published online: 20 January 2020

Abstract

We have studied the dewetting dynamics of partially wetting liquid films confined between a soft elastic hemisphere and an elastomer layer by means of systematic experiments. We focused on the experimentally most relevant case of non-axisymmetric dewetting, which initiated at the locations of minimum film thickness near the perimeter of the contact area. We found the contact line speed to be highly anisotropic in this case. It is significantly faster in the azimuthal direction along the perimeter of the contact spot than in the radially inwards direction. We developed a three-dimensional, fully coupled numerical model that reproduces many features observed in the experiments.