Viscous-Gravity spreading of oil on water

Abstract

Spreading of oil on calm water is analyzed for the second stage of spread, which is controlled by a balance between gravity and viscous forces. The analysis, using the integral boundary-layer method, agreed well with a numerical solution for the case of unidirectional spread. The analysis is extended to include axisymmetric spread for which there is no sound theoretical treatment presented in the literature. The approximations made in the model are discussed based on the lubrication approximation and order-of-magnitude arguments.