Standard thin-double-layer modeling of electro-osmotic flows about metal objects typically predicts an induced zeta-potential distribution whose characteristic magnitude varies linearly with the applied voltage. At moderately large zeta potential, comparable with several thermal voltages, surface conduction enters the dominant electrokinetic transport, throttling that linear scaling. We derive here a macroscale model for induced-charge electro-osmosis accounting for that mechanism. Unlike classical analyses of surface conduction about dielectric surfaces, the present nonlinear problem cannot be linearized about a uniform-zeta-potential reference state. With the transition to moderately large zeta potentials taking place nonuniformly, the Dukhin number, representing the magnitude of surface conduction, is reinterpreted as a local dimensionless group, varying along the boundary. Debye-scale analysis provides effective boundary conditions about two types of generic boundary points, corresponding to small and moderate Dukhin numbers. The boundary decomposition into the respective asymptotic domains is unknown in advance and must be determined throughout the solution of the macroscale problem, itself hinging upon the proper formulation of effective boundary conditions. This conceptual obstacle is surmounted via introduction of a uniform approximation to these conditions.

• Received 11 October 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.86.061506