Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate the dynamic process of liquid bridge formation between two parallel hydrophobic plates with hydrophilic patches, previously
studied in 1]. We propose a dynamic Hele-Shaw model to take advantage of the
small aspect ratio between the gap width and the plate size. A constrained level set
method is applied to solve the model equations numerically, where a global constraint
is imposed in the evolution 2] stage together with local constraints in the reinitialization 3] stage of level set function in order to limit numerical mass loss. In contrast
to the finite element method used in 2], we use a finite difference method with a
5th order HJWENO scheme for spatial discretization. To illustrate the effectiveness
of the constrained method, we have compared the results obtained by the standard
level set method with those from the constrained version. Our results show that the
constrained level set method produces physically reasonable results while that of the
standard method is less reliable. Our numerical results also show that the dynamic
nature of the flow plays an important role in the process of liquid bridge formation
and criteria based on static energy minimization approach has limited applicability. |