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April 15, 2026Journal of Fluid Mechanics5 citationsOpen Access

A consistent treatment of dynamic contact angles in the sharp-interface framework with the Generalised Navier Boundary Condition

TFTomas FullanaYKYash KulkarniMFMathis Fricke

Key Points

  • The aim is to develop a model for dynamic contact angles that adheres to fundamental kinematic principles using the Generalised Navier Boundary Condition.
  • Revising the Generalised Navier Boundary Condition by implementing a contact region model.
  • Utilizing a geometrical volume-of-fluid solver called Basilisk with a 'free angle' approach.
  • Coupling the model with a two-phase Navier–Stokes solver to analyze the withdrawing tape problem.
  • Achieved grid-independent solutions while regularizing the singularity at the moving contact line.
  • Demonstrated that the curvature at the contact line is finite and mesh converging.
  • Showed the dynamic contact angle balances Young stress and contact line friction.

Abstract

In this work, we revisit the Generalised Navier Boundary Condition (GNBC) introduced by Qian et al. in the sharp interface volume-of-fluid context. We replace the singular uncompensated Young stress by a smooth function with a characteristic width 0 that is understood as a physical parameter of the model. Therefore, we call the model the ‘contact region GNBC’ (CR-GNBC). We show that the model is consistent with the fundamental kinematics of the contact angle transport described by Fricke, Köhne and Bothe. We implement the model in the geometrical volume-of-fluid solver Basilisk using a ‘free angle’ approach. This means that the dynamic contact angle is not prescribed, but reconstructed from the interface geometry and subsequently applied as an input parameter to compute the uncompensated Young stress. We couple this approach to the two-phase Navier–Stokes solver and study the withdrawing tape problem with a receding contact line. It is shown that the model allows for grid-independent solutions and leads to a full regularisation of the singularity at the moving contact line, which is in accordance with the thin film equation subject to this boundary condition. In particular, it is shown that the curvature at the moving contact line is finite and mesh converging. As predicted by the fundamental kinematics, the parallel shear stress component vanishes at the moving contact line for quasi-stationary states (i. e. for d=0), and the dynamic contact angle is determined by a balance between the uncompensated Young stress and an effective contact line friction. Furthermore, a nonlinear generalisation of the model is proposed, which aims at reproducing the molecular kinetic theory of Blake and Haynes for quasi-stationary states.

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Cite This Study

Fullana et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69df2ae6e4eeef8a2a6afdd4https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2026.11332
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