Scalings in Coalescence of Liquid Droplets
Fluid Dynamics
2018-12-31 v2
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1803.05789,
title = {Scalings in Coalescence of Liquid Droplets},
author = {Xi Xia and Chengming He and Peng Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.05789},
year = {2018}
}