dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaEquilibrium Conditions for the Floating of Multiple Interfacial Objects
| Authors | Dominic Vella, Paul Metcalfe, Robert Whittaker |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0509009 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0509009 |
| DOI | 10.1017/S0022112005008013 |
| Journal | J. Fluid Mech., 549, pp. 215--224 (2006) |
Abstract
We study the effect of interactions between objects floating at fluid interfaces, for the case in which the objects are primarily supported by surface tension. We give conditions on the density and size of these objects for equilibrium to be possible and show that two objects that float when well-separated may sink as the separation between the objects is decreased. Finally, we examine the equilbrium of a raft of strips floating at an interface, and find that rafts of sufficiently low density may have infinite spatial extent, but that above a critical raft density, all rafts sink if they are sufficiently large. We compare our numerical and asymptotic results with some simple table-top experiments, and find good quantitative agreement.
{
"annotation_id": "0fc3042a-84e3-42da-bba9-6c4db84ce36c",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:01:00.697000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:01:00.697000Z",
"file_hash": "dd97891fab8ee589d0bb37a5f215ade56af485fe60307fc0cd7a103692187b33",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "We study the effect of interactions between objects floating at fluid\ninterfaces, for the case in which the objects are primarily supported by\nsurface tension. We give conditions on the density and size of these objects\nfor equilibrium to be possible and show that two objects that float when\nwell-separated may sink as the separation between the objects is decreased.\nFinally, we examine the equilbrium of a raft of strips floating at an\ninterface, and find that rafts of sufficiently low density may have infinite\nspatial extent, but that above a critical raft density, all rafts sink if they\nare sufficiently large. We compare our numerical and asymptotic results with\nsome simple table-top experiments, and find good quantitative agreement.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0509009",
"authors": [
"Dominic Vella",
"Paul Metcalfe",
"Robert Whittaker"
],
"categories": [
"physics.flu-dyn",
"cond-mat.soft"
],
"doi": "10.1017/S0022112005008013",
"journal_ref": "J. Fluid Mech., 549, pp. 215--224 (2006)",
"title": "Equilibrium Conditions for the Floating of Multiple Interfacial Objects",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0509009"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "fc376cf8-4a6c-4ec8-8dc5-aa709ac37470",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}