Three Periods of Drying of a Single Square Capillary Tube

Fabien Chauvet (1) , Paul Duru (1) , Sandrine Geoffroy (2) , Marc Prat (1)

1 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse
2 ICA - Institut Clément Ader

The drying kinetics of a porous medium is classically described in three main periods, which depend on the interplay between the external and internal mass transfers during evaporation. The first period is described as essentially depending on the external mass transfer, whereas the third period is dominated by the internal mass transfer. The second period is a crossover period. We show experimentally that a similar drying kinetics can be obtained from a much simpler system owing to the effect of corner liquid films: a capillary tube of square cross section.

Mots clés: Evaporation; Capillary tube; Liquid film; Corner flow

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Fabien Chauvet, Paul Duru, Sandrine Geoffroy, Marc Prat. Three Periods of Drying of a Single Square Capillary Tube. Physical Review Letters, 2009, vol. 103 (n° 12), pp. 124502-1-124502-4. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.124502⟩. ⟨hal-01359837⟩