Universality in the viscous-to-inertial coalescence of liquid droplets

We present a theory on the coalescence of 2 spherical liquid droplets that are initially stationary. The evolution of the radius of a liquid neck formed upon coalescence was formulated as an initial value problem and then solved to yield an exact solution without free parameters, with its 2 asymptot...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 116; no. 47; pp. 23467 - 23472
Main Authors Xia, Xi, He, Chengming, Zhang, Peng
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 19.11.2019
Subjects
Boundary value problems
Coalescence
Coalescing
Collapse
Crossovers
Droplets
Physical Sciences
droplet coalescence
scaling
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Summary:We present a theory on the coalescence of 2 spherical liquid droplets that are initially stationary. The evolution of the radius of a liquid neck formed upon coalescence was formulated as an initial value problem and then solved to yield an exact solution without free parameters, with its 2 asymptotic approximations reproducing the well-known scaling relations in the inertially limited viscous and inertial regimes. The viscous-to-inertial crossover observed in previous research is also recovered by the theory, rendering the collapse of data of different viscosities onto a single curve.
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Edited by David A. Weitz, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved October 14, 2019 (received for review June 30, 2019)
X.X., C.H., and P.Z. performed research; X.X. analyzed data; C.H. performed simulation; X.X. and P.Z. developed theory; and X.X. and P.Z. wrote the paper.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1910711116