Santosh Appathurai

The inexorable resistance of inertia determines the initial regime of drop coalescence

Drop coalescence is central to diverse processes involving dispersions of drops in industrial, engineering, and scientific realms. During coalescence, two drops first touch and then merge as the liquid neck connecting them grows from initially microscopic scales to a size comparable to the drop diameters. The curvature of the interface is infinite at the point where the drops first make contact, and the flows that ensue as the two drops coalesce are intimately coupled to this singularity in the dynamics. Conventionally, this process has been thought to have just two dynamical regimes: a viscous and an inertial regime with a cross-over region between them. We use experiments and simulations to reveal that a third regime, one that describes the initial dynamics of coalescence for all drop viscosities, has been missed. An argument based on force balance allows the construction of a new coalescence phase diagram.

On self-similarity in the drop-filament corner region formed during pinch-off of viscoelastic fluid threads

A characteristic feature of pinch-off of fluid threads is the formation of drops connected to thinning filaments. This phenomenon is encountered in a number of widely used applications requiring the production of drops such as electronics microfabrication via inkjet printing, spray coating/drying, and microarraying. In pinch-off of viscoelastic fluid threads, the region that connects the drops to the filaments develops into a sharp corner. Recently, Clasen et al. [J. Fluid Mech. 556, 283–308 (2006)]10.1017/S0022112006009633 showed that such a corner evolves self-similarly. They, however, neglected the capillary pressure in the drop. A modified similarity solution is presented here that incorporates the drop capillary-pressure term, and transient simulations of corner region profiles are shown to converge onto the new similarity solution better than that of Clasen et al. Indeed, the new similarity solution is valid in all the three regions: the drop, the corner, and the filament regions. Similarity solutio...