Coalescence of Two Equal Cylinders: Exact Results for Creeping Viscous Plane Flow Driven by Capillarity

Abstract

The coalescence of two equal viscous cylinders under the influence of capillarity is of interest in the theory of sintering. Although the flow in typical cylinder coalescence experiments is not planar, the plane‐flow case is of general interest and is a good approximation in the early stage. An essentially exact analytic solution giving the shape as a function of time for slow plane flow is presented in simple closed form.