Abstract
When droplets collide in a shear flow, they may coalesce or remain separate after the collision. At low Reynolds numbers, droplets coalesce when the capillary number does not exceed a critical value. We present three-dimensional simulations of droplet coalescence in a simple shear flow. We use a free-energy lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and study the collision outcome as a function of the Reynolds and capillary numbers. We study the Reynolds number range from 0.2 to 1.4 and capillary numbers between 0.1 and 0.5. We determine the critical capillary number for the simulations (0.19) and find that it is does not depend on the Reynolds number. The simulations are compared with experiments on collisions between confined droplets in shear flow. The critical capillary number in the simulations is about a factor of 25 higher than the experimental value.
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