Mesoscopic hydrodynamic model for spreading, sliding and coarsening compound drops

Abstract: We revisit the mesoscopic hydrodynamic description of the dynamics of sessile partially wetting compound drops, i.e., of drops that consist of two immiscible nonvolatile partially wetting liquids and are situated on a smooth rigid solid substrate. We briefly discuss and complete existing dynamic models employing a gradient dynamics approach. Thereby, the underlying energy features capillarity and wettability contributions for all relevant interfaces in full-curvature formulation. Establishing transparent consistency relations between macroscopic and mesoscopic parameters, we obtain mesoscopic Neumann and Young laws that are also fully consistent with the macroscopic ones. In particular, we discuss the minimal requirements for the wetting energy that ensure the full spectrum of macroscopic parameters {for partially wetting cases} is addressed by the mesoscopic model. Subsequently, we distinguish long-wave and full-curvature variants of the dynamical model based on properties of the energy, and employ the latter to illustrate the usage of the mesoscopic model. As examples, we chose the spreading of individual compound drops on one-dimensional horizontal substrates, sliding compound drops on one-dimensional inclined substrates, and the coarsening of drop ensembles on one- and two-dimensional horizontal substrates. In each case, the discussion emphasizes occurring qualitative changes in the drop configurations.