A theoretical mesh-free scheme to model viscous drop interactions: a particle-based method

Abstract

Here a Lagrangian mesh-free formalism is presented to simulate the coalescence process between three unequal-sized liquid drops in the three-dimensional space. The surface tension forces acting on the surface of the drops cause the formation of a circular flat section when the droplets collide. The effect of polydispersity on the collision dynamics is simulated using a set of droplets with radius around 30 μm. It is important to see that the inhomogeneous distribution of the droplets size results in very important changes on the drops dynamics. The smoothed particle hydrodynamics scheme proposed here can be used to model situations where a continuum phase is included in the problem. The velocity vector fields are computed for each situation, and it can be seen that in the zone of contact between the droplets, there is an increment of the velocity value. This is due to the pressure distribution inside the drops.