Analysis of the spreading radius in droplet impact: The two-dimensional case

Abstract

We study droplet impact problems in a 3D cylindrical or equivalent 2D Cartesian geometry. Such structures do have an approximate experimental realization, and they are often simulated as a testbed for computational methods. We focus on droplet impact on a smooth homogeneous surface as well as head-on collision of two droplets. We perform an energy-budget analysis and introduce a correlation, which predicts the maximum spreading radius as a function of Reynolds number and Weber number. We show how the dissipation term in this analysis can be decomposed into boundary-layer dissipation in the droplet lamella (where applicable) and head loss. We use existing results in the literature (simulations and experiments) as well as our own simulation results to validate the correlation. Dissipation by head loss is a key term in the analysis: only by modeling it accurately, one can obtain good agreement between the simulations and the theory.