Breaking one into three: surface-tension-driven droplet breakup in T-junctions

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zhou, Jiande, Ducimetière, Yves-Marie, Migliozzi, Daniel, Keiser, Ludovic, Bertsch, Arnaud, Gallaire, François, Renaud, Philippe
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2022
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author Zhou, Jiande
Ducimetière, Yves-Marie
Migliozzi, Daniel
Keiser, Ludovic
Bertsch, Arnaud
Gallaire, François
Renaud, Philippe
author_facet Zhou, Jiande
Ducimetière, Yves-Marie
Migliozzi, Daniel
Keiser, Ludovic
Bertsch, Arnaud
Gallaire, François
Renaud, Philippe
contents Droplet breakup is an important phenomenon in the field of microfluidics to generate daughter droplets. In this work, a novel breakup regime in the widely studied T-junction geometry is reported, where the pinch-off occurs laterally in the two outlet channels, leading to the formation of three daughter droplets, rather than at the center of the junction for conventional T-junctions which leads to two daughter droplets. It is demonstrated that this new mechanism is driven by surface tension, and a design rule for the T-junction geometry is proposed. A model for low values of the capillary number $Ca$ is developed to predict the formation and growth of an underlying carrier fluid pocket that accounts for this lateral breakup mechanism. At higher values of $Ca$, the conventional regime of central breakup becomes dominant again. The competition between the new and the conventional regime is explored. Altogether, this novel droplet formation method at T-junction provides the functionality of alternating droplet size and composition, which can be important for the design of new microfluidic tools.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2207_00077
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Breaking one into three: surface-tension-driven droplet breakup in T-junctions
Zhou, Jiande
Ducimetière, Yves-Marie
Migliozzi, Daniel
Keiser, Ludovic
Bertsch, Arnaud
Gallaire, François
Renaud, Philippe
Fluid Dynamics
Droplet breakup is an important phenomenon in the field of microfluidics to generate daughter droplets. In this work, a novel breakup regime in the widely studied T-junction geometry is reported, where the pinch-off occurs laterally in the two outlet channels, leading to the formation of three daughter droplets, rather than at the center of the junction for conventional T-junctions which leads to two daughter droplets. It is demonstrated that this new mechanism is driven by surface tension, and a design rule for the T-junction geometry is proposed. A model for low values of the capillary number $Ca$ is developed to predict the formation and growth of an underlying carrier fluid pocket that accounts for this lateral breakup mechanism. At higher values of $Ca$, the conventional regime of central breakup becomes dominant again. The competition between the new and the conventional regime is explored. Altogether, this novel droplet formation method at T-junction provides the functionality of alternating droplet size and composition, which can be important for the design of new microfluidic tools.
title Breaking one into three: surface-tension-driven droplet breakup in T-junctions
topic Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.00077