No Arabic abstract
This letter presents a scaling theory of the coalescence of two viscous spherical droplets. An initial value problem was formulated and analytically solved for the evolution of the radius of a liquid neck formed upon droplet coalescence. Two asymptotic solutions of the initial value problem reproduce the well-known scaling relations in the viscous and inertial regimes. The viscous-to-inertial crossover experimentally observed by Paulsen et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 114501 (2011)] manifests in the theory, and their fitting relation, which shows collapse of data of different viscosities onto a single curve, is an approximation to the general solution of the initial value problem.
When two sessile drops of the same liquid touch, they merge into one drop, driven by capillarity. However, the coalescence can be delayed, or even completely stalled for a substantial period of time, when the two drops have different surface tensions, despite being perfectly miscible. A temporary state of non-coalescence arises, during which the drops move on their substrate, only connected by a thin neck between them. Existing literature covers pure liquids and mixtures with low surface activities. In this paper, we focus on the case of large surface activities, using aqueous surfactant solutions with varying concentrations. It is shown that the coalescence behavior can be classified into three regimes that occur for different surface tensions and contact angles of the droplets at initial contact. However, not all phenomenology can be predicted from surface tension contrast or contact angles alone, but strongly depends on the surfactant concentrations as well. This reveals that the merging process is not solely governed by hydrodynamics and geometry, but also depends on the molecular physics of surface adsorption.
This study employs an improved volume of fluid method and adaptive mesh refinement algorithm to numerically investigate the internal jet-like mixing upon the coalescence of two initially stationary droplets of unequal sizes. The emergence of the internal jet is attributed to the formation of a main vortex ring, as the jet-like structure shows a strong correlation with the main vortex ring inside the merged droplet. By tracking the evolution of the main vortex ring together with its circulation, we identified two mechanisms that are essential to the internal-jet formation: the vortex-ring growth and the vortex-ring detachment. Recognizing that the manifestation of the vortex-ring-induced jet physically relies on the competition between the convection and viscous dissipation of the vortex ring, we further developed and substantiated a vortex-ring-based Reynolds number criterion to interpret the occurrence of the internal jet at various Ohnesorge numbers and size ratios. For the merged droplet with apparent jet formation, the average mixing rate after jet formation increases monotonically with the vortex-ring Reynolds number, which therefore serves as an approximate measure of the jet strength. In this respect, stronger internal jet is responsible for enhanced mixing of the merged droplet.
This letter presents a theory on the coalescence of two spherical liquid droplets that are initially stationary. The evolution of the radius of a liquid neck formed upon coalescence was formulated as an initial value problem and then solved to yield an exact solution without free parameters, with its two asymptotic approximations reproducing the well-known scaling relations in the viscous and inertial regimes. The viscous-to-inertial crossover observed by Paulsen et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 114501 (2011)] is also recovered by the theory, rendering the collapse of data of different viscosities onto a single curve.
The internal dynamics during the coalescence of a sessile droplet and a subsequently deposited impacting droplet, with either identical or distinct surface tension, is studied experimentally in the regime where surface tension is dominant. Two color high-speed cameras are used to capture the rapid internal flows and associated mixing from both side and bottom views simultaneously by adding an inert dye to the impacting droplet. Given sufficient lateral separation between droplets of identical surface tension, a robust surface jet is identified on top of the coalesced droplet. Image processing shows this jet is the result of a surface flow caused by the impact inertia and an immobile contact line. By introducing surface tension differences between the coalescing droplets, the surface jet can be either enhanced or suppressed via a Marangoni flow. The influence of the initial droplet configuration and relative surface tension on the long-term dynamics and mixing efficiency, plus the implications for emerging applications such as reactive inkjet printing, are also considered.
We perform rescaled range analysis upon the signals measured by Dual Particle Dynamical Analyzer in gas-liquid two-phase turbulent jets. A novel rescaled range analysis is proposed to investigate these unevenly sampled signals. The Hurst exponents of velocity and other passive scalars in the bulk of spray are obtained to be 0.59$pm $0.02 and the fractal dimension is hence 1.41$pm $ 0.02, which are in remarkable agreement with and much more precise than previous results. These scaling exponents are found to be independent of the configuration and dimensions of the nozzle and the fluid flows. Therefore, such type of systems form a universality class with invariant scaling properties.