Solutions of the thin film equation obtained in the limit of vanishing slip

Abstract

We analyze the evolution of thin liquid droplets in the lubrication approximation with different slip conditions at the liquid-solid interface. Motivated by the classical no-slip paradox which states that the Navier-Stokes equations with a no-slip boundary condition require unphysical infinite dissipation during droplet spreading, we focus on the limit of vanishing slip. We show that in the no-slip limit three fundamentally different classes of limiting solutions are approached, each of them corresponding to a different scaling of the microscopic contact angle as the regularization parameter vanishes. These findings suggest that the thin-film equation with no slip supports a rich family of physically admissible solutions, provided one interprets the no-slip thin film equation as the asymptotic limit of models which regularized slip conditions. Even though the large apparent contact angles in some of these solutions seem incompatible with the lubrication approximation, a refined analysis shows that the underlying physical variables remain consistent with the assumptions for the lubrication approximation.