Experimental contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of spreading of Newtonian fluids: effect of volume, viscosity and surfactant.

The dynamics of drop spreading of glycerol-water mixtures with and without surfactant on hydrophilic glass surfaces has been investigated. The influence of different factors, such as viscosity, drop volume and non-ionic alkyl (8-16) glucoside (Plantacare) surfactant concentration on the number and the nature of the spreading regimes is systematically investigated. More than 25 spreading experiments have been performed in order to obtain clear trends. The results confirm the existence of several spreading regimes for the duration of an experiment (200 s). For each regime, the radius can be expressed by a power law of the form R=Kt(n). Both n and K are necessary to identify the regime. The experimental data are compared with the analytical predictions of the combined theory of spreading. One of the main results of this study is that the nature of the regimes is strongly affected by the drop volume, the viscosity and the surfactant concentration. This behavior is not predicted by the theory. For drop volume less than or equal to 15 microL, a succession of two different regimes which depend on the viscosity and surfactant concentration are observed in the following order: a molecular-kinetic regime followed by a hydrodynamic regime (for high viscosity in the presence of surfactant) or a hydrodynamic regime and lastly a final asymptotic regime corresponding to a long relaxation time to equilibrium (for high viscosity in absence of surfactant and for low viscosity regardless of the presence of surfactant). The spreading follows quantitatively the predictions of the theory. Our results demonstrate that the theory is still valid for low viscosity liquids and in the presence of surfactant. The contact angle for which the crossover between molecular-kinetic regime and hydrodynamic regime occurs is thoroughly estimated since the theories do not allow the exact calculation of this value. Here for the first time, an empirical power law exponent (n=0.08+/-0.05) is proposed for the last asymptotic regime since its quantitative estimation was not provided by the theory. For drop volume larger than 15 microL, the combined theory is still valid and the spreading process goes through a combination of two different regimes. In absence of surfactant, the succession of a molecular-kinetic regime and lastly a hydrodynamic regime, is demonstrated.