A Critical Review of Dynamic Wetting by Complex Fluids: From Newtonian Fluids to Non-Newtonian Fluids and Nanofluids

Abstract

Dynamic wetting is an important interfacial phenomenon in many industrial applications. There have been many excellent reviews of dynamic wetting, especially on super-hydrophobic surfaces with physical or chemical coatings, porous layers, hybrid micro/nano structures and biomimetic structures. This review summarizes recent research on dynamic wetting from the viewpoint of the fluids rather than the solid surfaces. The reviewed fluids range from simple Newtonian fluids to non-Newtonian fluids and complex nanofluids. The fundamental physical concepts and principles involved in dynamic wetting phenomena are also reviewed. This review focus on recent investigations of dynamic wetting by non-Newtonian fluids, including the latest experimental studies with a thorough review of the best dynamic wetting models for non-Newtonian fluids, to illustrate their successes and limitations. This paper also reports on new results on the still fledgling field of nanofluid wetting kinetics. The challenges of research on nanofluid dynamic wetting is not only due to the lack of nanoscale experimental techniques to probe the complex nanoparticle random motion, but also the lack of multiscale experimental techniques or theories to describe the effects of nanoparticle motion at the nanometer scale (10-9 m) on the dynamic wetting taking place at the macroscopic scale (10-3 m). This paper describes the various types of nanofluid dynamic wetting behaviors. Two nanoparticle dissipation modes, the bulk dissipation mode and the local dissipation mode, are proposed to resolve the uncertainties related to the various types of dynamic wetting mechanisms reported in the literature.