Contact Line Pinning and Depinning Can Modulate the Rod-Climbing Effect.

Our experiments on the rod-climbing effect with an oil-coated rod revealed two key differences in the rod-climbing phenomena compared to a bare rod. First, an enhancement in the magnitude of climbing height for any particular value of the rod rotational speed and second, a decrease in the threshold rod rotational speed required for the appearance of the rod-climbing effect were observed. Observed phenomena are explained by considering the contact line behavior at the rod-fluid interface. Transient evolution of the meniscus at the rod-fluid interface revealed that the three-phase contact line was pinned for a bare rod and depinned for an oil-coated rod. We modeled the subject fluid as a Giesekus fluid to predict the climbing height. The differences in the contact line behavior were incorporated via the contact angle at the rod-fluid interface as a boundary condition. Agreement was found between the observed and predicted climbing height, establishing that contact line behavior may modulate the rod-climbing effect.