Equilibrium and stability of axisymmetric drops on a conical substrate under gravity

Motivated by recent investigations of toroidal tissue clusters that are observed to climb conical obstacles after self-assembly [Nurse et al., “A model of force generation in a three-dimensional toroidal cluster of cells,” J. Appl. Mech. 79, 051013 (2012)], we study a related problem of the determination of the equilibrium and stability of axisymmetric drops on a conical substrate in the presence of gravity. A variational principle is used to characterize equilibrium shapes that minimize surface energy and gravitational potential energy subject to a volume constraint, and the resulting Euler equation is solved numerically using an angle/arclength formulation. The resulting equilibria satisfy a Laplace-Young boundary condition that specifies the contact angle at the three-phase trijunction. The vertical position of the equilibrium drops on the cone is found to vary significantly with the dimensionless Bond number that represents the ratio of gravitational and capillary forces; a global force balance is used to examine the conditions that affect the drop positions. In particular, depending on the contact angle and the cone half-angle, we find that the vertical position of the drop can either increase (“the drop climbs the cone”) or decrease due to a nominal increase in the gravitational force. Most of the equilibria correspond to upward-facing cones and are analogous to sessile drops resting on a planar surface; however, we also find equilibria that correspond to downward facing cones that are instead analogous to pendant drops suspended vertically from a planar surface. The linear stability of the drops is determined by solving the eigenvalue problem associated with the second variation of the energy functional. The drops with positive Bond number are generally found to be unstable to non-axisymmetric perturbations that promote a tilting of the drop. Additional points of marginal stability are found that correspond to limit points of the axisymmetric base state. Drops that are far from the tip are subject to azimuthal instabilities with higher mode numbers that are analogous to the Rayleigh instability of a cylindrical interface. We have also found a range of completely stable solutions that correspond to small contact angles and cone half-angles.