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Limitations on Scaling by Contact Angle
Author(s) -
Philip J. R.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
soil science society of america journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1435-0661
pISSN - 0361-5995
DOI - 10.2136/sssaj1971.03615995003500030048x
Subject(s) - contact angle , conical surface , scaling , porous medium , geometry , solid angle , interpretation (philosophy) , materials science , yield (engineering) , optics , physics , porosity , mathematics , composite material , computer science , detector , programming language
The prevalent notion that the (static and dynamic) behavior of liquids in porous media such as soils may be scaled by contact angle depends on the over‐simplification that such media are bundles of long cylindrical capillaries. Observations on such media yield, at best, apparent contact angles which cannot be related directly to contact angle at interfaces within the medium. In some circumstances scaling by apparent contact angle may hold approximately, but this is of only limited value, since apparent contact angle depends not only on the true liquid‐solid contact angle, but also on properties of the internal geometry of the medium. These matters are illustrated through the counter‐example of a (somewhat more realistic) conical‐pore model; and an interpretation is offered of some data of Mustafa et al. (4).