Existence of Moffatt vortices at a moving contact line between two fluids

Mijail Febres Soria (1) , Dominique Legendre (1)

1 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse

According to Kirkinis and Davis [J. Fluid Mech. 746, R3 (2014)], the motion of a contact line can produce a sequence of moving eddies, commonly known as Moffatt vortices. In this work, we extend the formulation given in Kirkinis and Davis for the moving contact line between two viscous fluids and a nonzero static contact angle, and we consider the flow structure in the corner between the interface and the wall. In particular, we discuss the condition for observing Moffatt vortices and we demonstrate that an infinite series of Moffatt vortices cannot be observed considering a Navier-slip boundary condition.

Mots clés: Moffatt vortices; Moving contact line

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

Mijail Febres Soria, Dominique Legendre. Existence of Moffatt vortices at a moving contact line between two fluids. Physical Review Fluids, 2017, vol. 2 (n° 11), pp. 114002/1-114002/2. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevFluids.2.114002⟩. ⟨hal-01792676⟩