Bernoulli catenary and elasto-capillary effect in partially wet fibrous materials

Abstract

When a wetting liquid wicks into a fibrous material, it causes the material to deform. In this paper we discuss the elasto-capillary effect that leads to spontaneous internal stresses in the materials. The elasto-capillary effect produced by menisci in pores can be identified through a specific stress distribution in the fibrous matrix. We show that the classical Bernoulli problem of a freely hanging fabric can be used for the analysis of gravity-induced stresses in textile materials. These stresses change due to elasto-capillary effect. Wicking of a wetting liquid into a freely suspended fibrous material is shown to be an instructive nontrivial experiment illustrating interesting distinguishable stress distributions in the fibrous matrix.

Wetting morphologies on an array of fibers of different radii

“…The wetting of rigid and elastic fibers is present in many natural and engineered systems: paper [1] and textiles, [2,3,4] filters [5,6] , fog-harvesting nets, [7] human and animal hair [8,9,10,11,12,13] or, more recently, microfabricated systems. [14,15] Indeed, various biological or technological materials are modeled as a network of fibers that are parallel or randomly oriented.…”

A review on advanced imaging technologies for the quantification of wicking in textiles

“…The use of such high-speed image acquisition can also be applied to woven fabrics. Another imaging method on nonwoven materials that can be extended to woven fabrics is the one presented in Monaenkova et al 37,38 The group imaged simultaneously the front and the profile of a sagged non-woven fabric during wicking by using a set of mirrors. Their setup and resulting image are shown in Figure 5.…”