A numerical study of droplet deformation and droplet breakup in a non-orthogonal cross-section

Abstract

In this work, we numerically investigate the deformation and breakup of a droplet flowing along the centerline of a microfluidic non-orthogonal intersection junction. The relevant boundary data of the velocity field is numerically computed by solving the depth-averaged Brinkman equation via a self-consistent integral equation using the boundary element method. The effect of the capillary number, droplet size, intersection angle, and ratio of outlet channel width to inlet channel width on maximum droplet deformation are studied. We study droplet deformation for the capillary numbers in the range of 0.08-0.3 and find that the maximum droplet deformation scales with the capillary number with power law with an exponent 1.10. We also investigate the effect of droplet size and intersection angle on the maximum droplet deformation and observe that the droplet deformation is proportional to droplet volume and square root of intersection angle, respectively. In continue, we study the droplet breakup phenomenon in an orthogonal intersection junction. By increasing the capillary number, the deformation of a droplet traveling in the cross-junction region becomes larger, until the droplet shape is no longer observed and droplet breakup takes place at a critical value of capillary number. We present a phase diagram for droplet breakup as a function of undeformed droplet radius.