Tipstreaming of a drop in simple shear flow in the presence of surfactant

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-phase SPH simulation method to analyze how surfactants affect drop deformation and breakup in shear flow, considering surfactant transport and surface tension variations.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel multi-phase SPH approach that models surfactant effects, including transport and diffusion, on drop dynamics in shear flow.

Findings

Surfactants significantly influence drop deformation and breakup.

Transport mechanisms alter the surface tension distribution.

The method accurately captures surfactant effects on interface behavior.

Abstract

We have developed a multi-phase SPH method to simulate arbitrary interfaces containing surface active agents (surfactants) that locally change the properties of the interface, such the surface tension coefficient. Our method incorporates the effects of surface diffusion, transport of surfactant from/to the bulk phase to/from the interface and diffusion in the bulk phase. Neglecting transport mechanisms, we use this method to study the impact of insoluble surfactants on drop deformation and breakup in simple shear flow and present the results in a fluid dynamics video.