Figure 2 - uploaded by Johanna Andersson
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
Spontaneous spreading of liquids in porous materials is of great industrial relevance and occurs in, for example, diapers, fabrics, paper or paint. Often, it is necessary to manipulate the spreading rate of liquids to result in the desired mass transport, for example to soak up large liquid volumes, as in a diaper. To do this, it is necessary to kn...
Citations
This process of using water in a container and scale with attached towel paper, then dipping just the tip of the towel paper is used to determine the plot of rise in capillary tube (towel paper) with the square root is time. From this plot we determine its slope which is very useful parameter in Lucas-Washburn equation. This method is applicable for any types of fluid at any temperature. This method of finding surface tension of the fluid can also be used to determine the contact angle between the penetrating liquid and the solid (tube wall) which is otherwise hard to determine. From plotting the rise in the towel paper due to capillary action versus square root of time rather than time reduces the error in calculation because by this we can produce straight line graph from which we can accurately determine the slope whereas the length versus time graph produces a curve graph from which we cannot find the slope accurately. So, this method estimates the surface tension as well as the contact angle between the penetrating liquid and the solid (tube wall) very closely to the actual value
