https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-025-00536-w
Research - Soft Matter
Wetting ridge dissipation at large deformations
1
Physics of Fluids Group, Mesa+ Institute, University of Twente, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands
2
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, 37077, Göttingen, Germany
3
Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, 78457, Konstanz, Germany
4
Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, L8S 4M1, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
5
UMR CNRS Gulliver 7083, ESPCI Paris, 75005, Paris, France
6
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
a
stefan.karpitschka@uni-konstanz.de
Received:
6
August
2025
Accepted:
20
November
2025
Published online:
17
December
2025
Liquid drops slide more slowly over soft, deformable substrates than over rigid solids. This phenomenon can be attributed to the viscoelastic dissipation induced by the moving wetting ridge, which inhibits a rapid motion, and is called “viscoelastic braking”. Experiments on soft dynamical wetting have thus far been modeled using linear theory, assuming small deformations, which captures the essential scaling laws. Quantitatively, however, some important disparities have suggested the importance of large deformations induced by the sliding drops. Here we compute the dissipation occurring below a contact line moving at constant velocity over a viscoelastic substrate, for the first time explicitly accounting for large deformations. It is found that linear theory becomes inaccurate for thin layers and for ridge angles that are typically encountered in experiments. We explore neo-Hookean and strain-stiffening solids and discuss our findings in light of recent experiments.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
