Stick-slip contact line motion on Kelvin-Voigt model substrates

The capillary traction of a liquid contact line causes highly localized deformations in soft solids, tremendously slowing down wetting and dewetting dynamics by viscoelastic braking. Enforcing nonetheless large velocities leads to the so-called stick-slip instability, during which periodically depins from its own ridge. mechanism this periodic motion and, especially, role fluid have remained elusive, partly because theoretical description unsteady problem is not available so far. Here we present first numerical simulations full problem, with coupling between solid dynamics. We observe three regimes dynamics: steady braking at slow speeds, intermediate followed region where suppressed damping, ultimately gives way classical dynamics, dominated dissipation.