Inelastic spreading of viscoelastic drops
Abstract
When a liquid drop impacts a solid surface, rebound and splashing are known to be suppressed by additives that induce elastic effects; however, the influence of elasticity on the maximum spreading radius remains debated. The difficulty lies in isolating elastic resistance from the enhanced spreading caused by viscous shear thinning. Here, we experimentally decouple these effects by investigating Boger fluid drops (constant-viscosity solutions with high elasticity) of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and polyacrylamide (PAAM). We demonstrate that elastic properties do not alter the maximum spreading ratio, even at high concentrations up to 1000 ppm. We formulate an energy balance that accounts for the inertial, capillary, viscous, and elastic contributions, and yields a dimensionless criterion (Γ) that estimates the degree of elastic effects. We show that Γ≪ 1 for all impact conditions tested, demonstrating that elastic effects are energetically negligible during droplet spreading, opposite to what Weissenberg and Deborah numbers would predict.
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BibTeX
@misc{abbot2026inelastic,
title = {{Inelastic spreading of viscoelastic drops}},
author = {Mete Abbot and Thijs Varkevisser and Manglesh Singh and Antoine Gaillard and Devranjan Samanta and Daniel Bonn},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.10851},
eprint = {2608.10851},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10851},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Inelastic spreading of viscoelastic drops
AU - Mete Abbot
AU - Thijs Varkevisser
AU - Manglesh Singh
AU - Antoine Gaillard
AU - Devranjan Samanta
AU - Daniel Bonn
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.10851
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10851
AB - When a liquid drop impacts a solid surface, rebound and splashing are known to be suppressed by additives that induce elastic effects; however, the influence of elasticity on the maximum spreading radius remains debated. The difficulty lies in isolating elastic resistance from the enhanced spreading caused by viscous shear thinning. Here, we experimentally decouple these effects by investigating Boger fluid drops (constant-viscosity solutions with high elasticity) of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and polyacrylamide (PAAM). We demonstrate that elastic properties do not alter the maximum spreading ratio, even at high concentrations up to 1000 ppm. We formulate an energy balance that accounts for the inertial, capillary, viscous, and elastic contributions, and yields a dimensionless criterion (Γ) that estimates the degree of elastic effects. We show that Γ≪ 1 for all impact conditions tested, demonstrating that elastic effects are energetically negligible during droplet spreading, opposite to what Weissenberg and Deborah numbers would predict.
ER -