A Lubrication Model of Coating Flows over a Curved Substrate in Space

Abstract

Consider the three-dimensional flow of a viscous Newtonian fluid upon an abitrarily curved substrate when the fluid film is thin as occurs in many draining, coating and biological flows. We derive a model of the dynamics of the film, the model being expressed in terms of the film thickness and the curvature tensor of the substrate. The model accurately includes the effects of the curvature of the substrate, via a physical multiple-scale approach, and gravity and inertia, via more rigorous centre manifold techniques. Numerical simulations exhibit some generic features of the dynamics of such thin fluid films on substrates with complex curvature.