Wetting and swelling of elastic fibers

Fibrous materials are commonly used to absorb liquid, strengthen paper or filtrate droplets. The interactions between such slender objects and a liquid is key to understand the phenomena at play in these situations. This talk will investigate the swelling of model elastic fibers interacting with favorable solvents. We first discuss the absorption of one drop of solvent placed on an elastomer fiber and evaluate the time required for complete absorption of the drop and model the dynamics of absorption using a pseudo-diffusive model of swelling. We then examine experimentally and theoretically the effect of swelling on a stretched fiber and how it will impact the simultaneous absorption of two drops placed on the same fiber. If the drops are close enough together, we observe the appearance of fluid ejected from the fiber. We call this phenomenon “deswelling” and propose to predict this behavior using a poroelastic model. Finally, we study a simple textile model composed of two parallel fibers and study the imbibition of liquid between these two swellable objects.

This is joint work with Pierre Van de Velde (d'Alembert and LadHyX), Julien Dervaux (Laboratoire MSC Paris) and Camille Duprat (LadHyX, Ecole Polytechnique Palaiseau).