Instabilities and breakup in thin liquid films
Keywords: Chemical Engineering.

Liquid films having dimensions that are relatively small in the direction normal to their surface are commonly referred to as thin liquid films. Due to their prevalence in nature and due to their unique geometrical characteristics, a comprehensive understanding of thin film dynamics including instabilities and break-up within thin liquid films is of fundamental and practical interest. Practically this understanding is crucial to tuning the stability thin films in a number of important applications such as for stabilizing foams in foods and beverages, destabilizing foams in lubricants, avoiding surface irregularities in liquid coatings and treating ophthalmic disorders originating from the unnatural breakup of the tear film. Fundamentally, the microscopic thickness of these liquid films along with their large surface to volume ratio presents a convenient framework to investigate characteristics of two dimensional flows, and probe the effects of surface phenomenon such as evaporation and surfactant dynamics on fluid flows. Motivated by the importance of thin liquid films, in this thesis, we experimentally investigate the instabilities and break-up within thin liquid films. In the first part of the thesis (Chapters 2 - 4), we develop and optimize experimental tools and protocols for systematically studying thin liquid films. Notably, we show that single bubble/drop experiments are a convenient and complementary technique to study the dynamics of thin liquid films. Subsequently, we detail a new technique for automatically and robustly measuring the spatiotemporal thickness of thin liquid films - hyperspectral interferometry coupled with machine learning. Finally, we will also establish the operating regimes within which the size of bubbles formed on capillaries for single bubble experiments can be precisely controlled to avoid an air compressibility driven shape instabilities. In the subsequent parts of the thesis we utilize the developed tools to study four different problems - Bubble stability in worm like micellar (WLM) polymer solutions (Chapter 5), Lubricant foaming (Chapters 6 - 8), Drying of thin polymer films (Chapter 9) and Dewetting of the tear film (Chapter 10). In Chapter 5, we explore a problem relevant for the cosmetic industry, and characterize the drainage characteristics of thin films between bubbles and flat wormlike micellar solution - air interfaces. The supramolecular structure and elasticity of the wormlike micelles alters the dynamics of film drainage in WLM as compared to those in thin films containing pure surfactants. The unique features of film drainage include film elasticity driven 'dimple recoil' and a single step transition to a Newton black film beyond a critical film thickness. In Chapters 6 - 8, we explore a problem relevant for the lubricant industry, and study the stability of thin liquid films in lubricants with and without antifoams. Utilizing single bubble experiments, we reveal that the stability of thin films between bubbles in lubricant base oils are enhanced by Marangoni flows driven by the differential evaporation of the various components in the oil. Fundamentally, we also show that the spatiotemporal characteristics of these Marangoni flows are regulated by the concentration and volatility of the volatile species in the oil. Interestingly when the concentration of the volatile species approaches 50%, evaporation driven Marangoni flows become chaotic, with disordered spatial structure, chaotic fluctuations, spatially invariant mean film thickness statistics, high sensitivity to initial conditions, rapidly decaying spatial correlation and a power spectrum for thickness fluctuation that obeys a power law scaling that closely resembles the Kolmogorov's -5/3rd scaling. In the presence of filtered lubricants with antifoams, we reveal that the stability of thin films are positively correlated to the number of filtration cycles, and inversely correlated to the nominal filter pore size and the initial antifoam concentration. In Chapter 9 we explore a problem relevant for film coating, and study the drying of aqueous polymer solutions. Depending on the polymer concentration and the polymer diffusivities, we show that a classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability can develop within the drying solution. We also present the scaling laws describing the onset time of the instability as a function of the physical properties and initial polymer concentrations of the solutions. In Chapter 10 we report a platform to characterize the thickness of the tear film in vivo. By qualitatively comparing the dewetting characteristics observed in vivo with in vitro experiments, we will show that the mechanisms of dewetting is influenced by the presence of interfacial rheology. Further we also reveal that the spatial locations that are prone to dewetting are determined by the presence of interfacial rheology and the spatiotemporal drainage characteristics of the tear film. In Chapter 11 we summarize the findings in this thesis and discuss a number of interesting venues for future research