When a liquid drop makes initial
contact with any surface,
an unbalanced
surface tension force drives the contact line, causing spreading.
For Newtonian liquids, either liquid inertia or viscosity dictates
these early regimes of spreading, albeit with different power-law
behaviors of the evolution of the dynamic spreading radius. In this
work, we investigate the early regimes of spreading for yield-stress
liquids. We conducted spreading experiments with hydrogels and blood
with varying degrees of yield stress. We observe that for yield-stress
liquids, the early regime of spreading is primarily dictated by their
high shear rate viscosity. For yield-stress liquids with low values
of high shear rate viscosity, the spreading dynamics mimics that of
Newtonian liquids like water, i.e., an inertia-capillary regime exhibited
by a power-law evolution of spreading radius with exponent 1/2. With
increasing high shear rate viscosity, we observe that a deceptively
similar, although slower, power-law spreading regime is obeyed. The
observed regime is in fact a viscous-capillary where viscous dissipation
dominates over inertia. The present findings can provide valuable
insights into how to efficiently control moving contact lines of biomaterial
inks, which often exhibit yield-stress behavior and operate at high
print speeds, to achieve desired print resolution.