Thick films of viscous fluid coating a plate withdrawn from a liquid reservoir

We consider the deposition of a film of viscous liquid on a flat plate being withdrawn from a bath, experimentally and theoretically. For any plate speed U, there is a range of “thick” film solutions whose thickness scales like U1/2 for small U. These solutions are realized for a partially wetting liquid, while for a perfectly wetting liquid the classical Landau-Levich-Derjaguin film is observed, whose thickness scales like U2/3. The thick film is distinguished from the Landau-Levich-Derjaguin film by a dip in its spatial profile at the transition to the bath. We calculate the phase diagram for the existence of stationary film solutions as well as the film profiles and find excellent agreement with experiment.