A General Statement of the Problem and Description of a Proposed Method of Calculation for Some Meniscus Problems in Materials Processing.

Abstract

The equilibrium shape of a liquid meniscus at a liquid-gas phase boundary of a system in which solid, liquid, and gaseous phases coexist is given by a balance of forces acting on the system. It is often greatly desirable in many materials processing applications to knowand be ab]e to predict this meniscus shape, becausecontroll ing it often affects the structure or properties of the resulting material. A methodof calculation is introduced along with the Surface Evolver computer program, and solutions for simple geometries obtained using this program are comparedwith existing analytical and simple numerical solutions.