Wetting balance experiments are used to assess the wettability of a solder
alloy in contact with a substrate.
The experimental setup is shown by the left figure, and a
movie (2.6 MB) shows the dynamic behavior of
the wetting balance experiment.
Surface Evolver solutions, illustrated to the right,
can be used in
conjuction with wetting experiments to judge whether a particular
experiment is giving results that are consistent with equilibrium as
determined by surface energy minimization. A
movie (1.1MB) illustrates the process by which the equilibrium shape
is calculated.
You can download Evolver code which may be tailored for particular physical parameters.