We develop an efficient simulation scheme to study a model suspension of equally sized colloidal hard spheres and nonadsorbing ideal polymer coils, both in bulk and adsorbed against a planar hard wall. The many-body character of the polymer-mediated effective interactions between the colloids yields a bulk phase diagram and adsorption phenomena that differ substantially from those found for pai...

We study capillary trapping in porous media using direct pore-scale simulation of two-phase flow on microCT images of a Berea sandstone and a sandpack. The trapped non-wetting phase saturations are predicted by solving the full Navier–Stokes equations using a volume-of-fluid based finite-volume framework to simulate primary drainage followed by water injection. Using these simulations, we analy...

This work presents a methodology for determining the interface between wetting and nonwetting phases inside a three-dimensional porous space, at a given equilibrium state. The work is limited to the study of mechanical equilibrium. The method is based on a three dimensional extension of the opening method from image analysis presented in [1] and applied on threedimensional stochastically recons...

Micropatterned surfaces have been studied extensively as model systems to understand influences of topographic or chemical heterogeneities on wetting phenomena. Such surfaces yield specific wetting or hydrodynamic effects, for example, ultrahydrophobic surfaces, 'fakir' droplets, tunable electrowetting, slip in the presence of surface heterogeneities and so on. In addition, chemical patterns al...

We study the pattern formation of a chiral nematic liquid crystal under a wetting transition. In the isotropic-liquid crystal transition, a surface-enhanced effect happens and a thin liquid crystal layer forms at the substrates of the cell. In this confined system, chirality, elastic anisotropy, surface anchoring, and wetting strength interplay. A striped pattern is formed due to the chiral nat...

We provide an overview of our recent advances in the manipulation of wetting in inverse-opal photonic crystals. Exploiting photonic crystals with spatially patterned surface chemistry to confine the infiltration of fluids to liquidspecific spatial patterns, we developed a highly selective scheme for colorimetry, where organic liquids are distinguished based on wetting. The high selectivity of w...

Abstract: We describe simulations performed in COMSOL Multiphysics® of the precipitation of helium (He) on solid-state interfaces. The non-uniform precipitation of He at certain interfaces is a result of a heterogeneous energy distribution in the interface plane: He wets high interface energy ("heliophilic") regions but does not wet low interface energy ("heliophobic") ones [1]. Using a phase-f...

We present a dynamic network model to investigate the effects of capillary number and viscosity ratio on displacement patterns and fractional flow in primary drainage. This model predicts the events that are observed in the micro-model experiments, such as swelling of the wetting layers and the meniscus oscillation. Interfaces are tracked through the pore elements using a modified Poiseuille eq...