Issue 46, 2013

Capillary buckling of a floating annulus

Abstract

We describe the out-of-plane buckling of a flexible annulus floating on a bath of water as surfactant molecules are added outside the annulus. The difference in surface tension induces compressive stresses, which result in regular orthoradial wrinkles beyond a critical difference in surface tension. The wrinkles first appear in the vicinity of the inner edge of the annulus and progressively grow as the concentration of surfactant is increased. Conversely, the wavenumber remains constant and relies on a simple balance between gravity and the bending stiffness of the membrane within the range of our experimental parameters. Our experiments fall outside the regimes explored in the literature for similar situations, and we propose an approximate analytical description that completes the existing theoretical grounds.

Graphical abstract: Capillary buckling of a floating annulus

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Jul 2013
Accepted
02 Sep 2013
First published
02 Sep 2013

Soft Matter, 2013,9, 10985-10992

Capillary buckling of a floating annulus

M. Piñeirua, N. Tanaka, B. Roman and J. Bico, Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 10985 DOI: 10.1039/C3SM51825F

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