New Hydrodynamic Mechanism for Drop Coarsening

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new hydrodynamic mechanism for drop coarsening during phase separation, identifying two growth regimes based on volume fraction, with a sharp transition at around 30%.

Contribution

It presents a novel coalescence-based mechanism for drop coarsening and characterizes the transition between interconnected and disconnected drop regimes.

Findings

Linear growth in interconnected regime

1/3 power law in disconnected regime

Sharp transition at 30% volume fraction

Abstract

We discuss a new mechanism of drop coarsening due to coalescence only, which describes the late stages of phase separation in fluids. Depending on the volume fraction of the minority phase, we identify two different regimes of growth, where the drops are interconnected and their characteristic size grows linearly with time, and where the spherical drops are disconnected and the growth follows (time) 1/3. The transition between the two regimes is sharp and occurs at a well defined volume fraction of order 30%.