On the geometry of rate independent droplet evolution

Abstract: We introduce a toy model for rate-independent droplet motion on a surface with contact angle hysteresis based on the one-phase Bernoulli free boundary problem. We consider a notion of energy solutions and show existence by a minimizing movement scheme. The main result of the paper is on the PDE conditions satisfied by general energy solutions: we show that the solutions satisfy the dynamic contact angle condition $\mathcal{H}^{d-1}$-a.e. along the contact line at every time.