A slow thermocapillary migration of a droplet at vanishingly small Reynolds and Marangoni numbers was theoretically investigated. A force on the droplet released in another liquid subjected to arbitrary configuration of the gravitational field and an imposed thermal gradient for the case of constant liquid properties was derived using the general solutions given by Lamb. A solution to the migration was thereby obtained, which corresponds to the well-known YGB result as t →∞. In the case of variable physical properties with temperature, a nonlinear migration of the droplet was described by the dynamical equation of motion, and the numerical results were compared with available experimental data. The comparison exhibits a reasonable agreement between the theoretical prediction and the experimental results, which shows the dependence of physical properties on temperature is a primary cause of the continuous velocity variation in the thermocapillary droplet migration.
