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Slippery questions about complex fluids flowing past solids

Nature Materials volume 2, pages 221–227 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Viscous flow is familiar and useful, yet the underlying physics is surprisingly subtle and complex. Recent experiments and simulations show that the textbook assumption of 'no slip at the boundary' can fail greatly when walls are sufficiently smooth. The reasons for this seem to involve materials chemistry interactions that can be controlled — especially wettability and the presence of trace impurities, even of dissolved gases. To discover what boundary condition is appropriate for solving continuum equations requires investigation of microscopic particulars. Here, we draw attention to unresolved topics of investigation and to the potential to capitalize on 'slip at the wall' for purposes of materials engineering.

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Figure 1: Blowing a surface clean of dust particles.
Figure 4: Influence of wall roughness on flow past partially wetted surfaces.
Figure 5: Illustration that deviations from the traditional no-slip boundary condition depend systematically on surface roughness.
Figure 6: Illustration that the onset of 'slip' depends on dissolved gas, when simple newtonian fluids flow past atomically smooth surfaces, either wetted or partially wetted.
Figure 7: Illustration of what happens when contact of a water droplet with a solid surface is minimized by making the surface very rough.

Photo courtesy of Aurélie Lafuma and David Quéré, Collège de France, Paris.

Figure 2: Surface roughness promotes stick.
Figure 3: Slip of fluid past a surface can be apparent or real.

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Acknowledgements

For discussions, we are indebted to John Brady, Michel Cloître, Jack Douglas, Steve Meeker, Hugh Spikes, Jan Vermant and Norman Wagner. This work was supported in part by a grant to H.L. by the postdoctoral fellowship program from Korea Science & Engineering Foundation (KOSEF). This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of Materials Science, under Award No. DEFG02-91ER45439 through the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry and Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana, 61801, Illinois, USA

    Steve Granick, Yingxi Zhu & Hyunjung Lee

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  1. Steve Granick
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Correspondence to Steve Granick.

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Granick, S., Zhu, Y. & Lee, H. Slippery questions about complex fluids flowing past solids. Nature Mater 2, 221–227 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat854

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