Scaling laws for spreading of a liquid under pressure

Abstract We study squeeze flow of two different fluids (castor oil and ethylene glycol) between a pair of glass plates and a pair of perspex plates, under an applied load. The film thickness is found to vary with time as a power-law, where the exponent increases with load. After a certain time interval the area of fluid–solid contact saturates to a nearly steady value. This saturation area, increases with load at different rates for different fluid–solid combinations.