DropFENO: A Data-Free, Physics-Based Operator-Learning Framework for Droplet Equilibria on Mixed-Wettability Patterned Surfaces

We study whether the equilibrium of a drop on a chemically patterned wall, and the capillary forces that the pattern exerts on it, can be learned from the free energy alone, without solution data. We introduce DropFENO (Droplet Free-Energy Neural Operator), in which Fourier (FNO), tensor-factorised