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Pinning and avalanches in hydrophobic microchannels

Pinning and avalanches in hydrophobic microchannels
Pinning and avalanches in hydrophobic microchannels
Rare events appear in a wide variety of phenomena such as rainfall, floods, earthquakes, and risk. We demonstrate that the stochastic behavior induced by the natural roughening present in standard microchannels is so important that the dynamics for the advancement of a water front displacing air has plenty of rare events. We observe that for low pressure differences the hydrophobic interactions of the water front with the walls of the microchannel put the front close to the pinning point. This causes a burstlike dynamics, characterized by series of pinning and avalanches, that leads to an extreme-value Gumbel distribution for the velocity fluctuations and a nonclassical time exponent for the advancement of the mean front position as low as 0.38.
194501
Queralt-Martín, M.
b88f704a-7df9-45b1-9056-04ed5af42e54
Pradas, M.
8bb22c68-5d56-49a8-af2f-41a41b9fdde5
Rodríguez-Trujillo, R.
5184271e-2acb-4ae9-8bdc-0540145de365
Arundell, M.
e24d3405-a436-4d65-a6e4-2939ede79678
Corvera Poiré, E.
2cdee162-0599-429c-bc62-d50b01d8c07a
Hernández-Machado, A.
25c27ced-847a-4faf-a1cd-743177329bce
Queralt-Martín, M.
b88f704a-7df9-45b1-9056-04ed5af42e54
Pradas, M.
8bb22c68-5d56-49a8-af2f-41a41b9fdde5
Rodríguez-Trujillo, R.
5184271e-2acb-4ae9-8bdc-0540145de365
Arundell, M.
e24d3405-a436-4d65-a6e4-2939ede79678
Corvera Poiré, E.
2cdee162-0599-429c-bc62-d50b01d8c07a
Hernández-Machado, A.
25c27ced-847a-4faf-a1cd-743177329bce

Queralt-Martín, M., Pradas, M., Rodríguez-Trujillo, R., Arundell, M., Corvera Poiré, E. and Hernández-Machado, A. (2011) Pinning and avalanches in hydrophobic microchannels. Physical Review Letters, 106 (19), 194501. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.194501).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Rare events appear in a wide variety of phenomena such as rainfall, floods, earthquakes, and risk. We demonstrate that the stochastic behavior induced by the natural roughening present in standard microchannels is so important that the dynamics for the advancement of a water front displacing air has plenty of rare events. We observe that for low pressure differences the hydrophobic interactions of the water front with the walls of the microchannel put the front close to the pinning point. This causes a burstlike dynamics, characterized by series of pinning and avalanches, that leads to an extreme-value Gumbel distribution for the velocity fluctuations and a nonclassical time exponent for the advancement of the mean front position as low as 0.38.

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Published date: 13 May 2011

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Local EPrints ID: 189205
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/189205
PURE UUID: c4e6d08e-36c0-429f-be58-941cddf9ff4d

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Date deposited: 31 May 2011 10:24
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 03:35

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Contributors

Author: M. Queralt-Martín
Author: M. Pradas
Author: R. Rodríguez-Trujillo
Author: M. Arundell
Author: E. Corvera Poiré
Author: A. Hernández-Machado

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