Decreasing contact angles at accelerating three-phase moving contact lines

Abstract: We consider a liquid drop placed on a smooth homogeneous solid substrate as it spreads from rest to its eventual equilibrium state. The problem is studied numerically in the framework of a model where the contact angle formed by the drop's free surface with the substrate is not prescribed as a function of the contact-line speed and has to be found as part of the solution. It is shown that in this spontaneous spreading, as the drop starts moving and the contact line accelerates, the dynamic contact angle decreases with the contact-line speed, which is in line with what experimental observations on spontaneous wetting report, though it is contrary to what is assumed in most models aimed at describing experiments on the "forced" spreading. Nontrivial aspects of the implementation of the model in a finite-element-based algorithm are discussed in detail.