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Abstract: Two immiscible droplets wetting on a filament may assume engulfing, partial-engulfing, or non-engulfing morphology that depends on the wetting behavior and geometries of the resulting droplet-on-filament system. This paper studies the wetting behavior of two immiscible droplets contacting and sitting symmetrically on a straight filament. A set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) is formulated for determining the wetting morphology of the droplet-on-filament system. In the limiting case of engulfing or non-engulfing, the morphology of the droplet-on-filament system is determined in explicit form. In the case of partial-engulfing, surface finite element method is further employed for determining the wetting morphology, surface energy, and internal pressures of droplets of the system. Numerical scaling study is performed to explore their dependencies upon the wetting properties and geometries of the system. The study can be applicable for analysis and design of textiles with tailorable wetting properties and development of novel multifunctional fibrous materials for environmental protection such as oil-spill sorption, etc. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Droplet wetting on two parallel filaments may assume a barrel-shaped morphology or a liquid bridge depending upon the filament diameter and spacing, droplet volume, and contact angle. This paper is aimed to examine the dependency of droplet wetting length upon the above parameters. In the process, morphology of either a barrel-shaped droplet or a liquid bridge sitting on two parallel filaments is determined numerically by using surface finite element method (SFEM). Variation of wetting length with contact angle is examined at varying droplet volume, filament spacing, and droplet morphology. It is found that the droplet wetting length increases with decreasing filament spacing ratio as well as contact angle while it also increases with the growth of droplet volume. The dependency of wetting length upon contact angle behaves sensitive to filament spacing in the case of stable liquid bridges, while it exhibits nearly constant sensitivity to the contact angle in the case of barrel-shaped droplets. The quantitative relations yielded in this study can be considered as characteristic curves applicable for a variety of droplet-on-filament systems, particularly useful to wetting property characterization of filaments, micro liquid delivery, biological cell manipulation, etc. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]