Early regimes of capillary filling

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the inviscid regime (for which viscosity is unimportant and the flow occurs due to the balance between the capillary and the inertial effects) that invariably precedes the classical century-old Washburn regime during capillary filling. We demonstrate that a new nondimensional number, namely, the product of the Ohnesorge number and the ratio between the filling length (ℓ) and the radius of the capillary (R), dictates the occurrence of this regime and the other well-known regimes in a capillary filling problem. We also identify that this inviscid regime occurs for the time that is of the order of the capillary time scale and, as has been quantified before [Quere, Eur. Phys. Lett. 39, 533 (1997); Joly, J. Chem. Phys. 135, 214705 (2011)], is characterized by the filling length being linearly proportional to the filling time. We establish the universality of this regime by pinpointing the existence of this regime (showing appropriate dependencies of the capillary radii and density) from existing experimental and Molecular Dynamics Simulation results that signify disparate ranges of length and time scales.