Wetting between parallel fibres; column-unduloid and column disintegration transitions.

Wetting phenomena are studied for a fibre bundle consisting of three parallel cylinders of radius b. Two types of long liquid column (a disintegrated and a channel-filling column) and a state akin to the unduloid can form, depending on whether the cylinder-cylinder separation, 2d, is larger or smaller than certain critical values. The dimensionless threshold values d/b have been calculated, when gravity can be neglected and the liquid-fibre contact angle is zero. The threshold value for the morphological transition between disintegrated columns and channel-filling columns occurs for (d/b)tr1 = 0.07869, and the transition between channel-filling column and unduloid sets in when (d/b)tr2 = 2.85337. The existence of the first type of morphological transition is validated by computer simulation based on the Ising model and the Monte Carlo method, as well as by experiments carried out with steel cylinders and epoxy resin.