Breakup of Droplets in Micro and Nanofluidic T-Junctions

Authors

Mech. Eng. Dep., Sharif University of Technology, P. O. Box: 11365-9567, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

We employ numerical simulations to investigate the breakup of droplets in micro- and nanoscale T junctions, which are used to produce small droplets from a large droplet. For this purpose a Volume f Fluid (VOF) based method is used and for verifying the reliability of the numerical outcomes, the results are compared with the available experimental and analytical results. Our results reveal that breakup time and breakup length of the droplets play important roles in handling these systems optimally. Our results also indicate that for nanoscale Tjunctions by increasing the capillary number the performance increases while for the micro-scale systems there is a specific capillary number for which the system is in its optimum condition.

Keywords