We investigate theoretically and experimentally the evaporation of liquid disks in the presence of natural convection due to a density difference between the vapor and the surrounding gas. From the analogy between thermal convection above a heated disk and our system, we derive scaling laws to describe the evaporation rate. The local evaporation rate depends on the presence of a boundary layer in the gas phase such that the total evaporation rate is given by a combination of different scaling contributions, which reflect the structure of the boundary layer. We compare our theoretical predictions to experiments performed with water in an environment controlled in humidity, which validate our approach.

A solid withdrawn from a liquid bath entrains a film. In this review, after recalling the predictions and results for pure Newtonian liquids coated on simple solids, we analyze the deviations to this ideal case exploring successively three potential sources of complexity: the liquid-air interface, the bulk rheological properties of the liquid and the mechanical or chemical properties of the solid. For these different complexities, we show that significant effects on the film thickness are observed experimentally and we summarize the theoretical analysis presented in the literature, which attempt to rationalize these measurements.