Measurement of shear-induced dispersion in a dilute emulsion

Abstract

The time-dependent drop distribution of a dilute, polydisperse emulsion is measured in a simple shear flow. The suspending fluid is much more viscous than the dispersed phase (1:1000). Drops are found to drift away from either bounding wall and accumulate near the center of the gap, due to the anisotropy of droplet–plane interactions. An expression for this drift velocity has been derived for single drops by Chan and Leal [J. Fluid Mech. 92, 131 (1979)] and was in agreement with isolated drop migration observed in our work. Eventually the inward drift is balanced by a shear-induced gradient diffusivity, and a steady-state concentration distribution is reached. When the drops are sufficiently far from either wall a self-similar, parabolic concentration profile is predicted at all times. Droplet diffusivities were determined for capillary numbers Ca=γ̇āμ/σ between 0.17 and 0.92, where γ̇ is the shear rate, ā is the mean drop radius, μ is the viscosity of the suspending fluid, and σ the interfacial tension. The values obtained are an order of magnitude lower than theoretical predictions of Loewenberg made in the limit of small deformation.