Migration of a surfactant-laden droplet in non-isothermal Poiseuille flow

TL;DR

This study analyzes how surfactants and temperature gradients influence the motion of droplets in non-isothermal Poiseuille flow, revealing complex behaviors including velocity changes and direction reversal relevant for microfluidic applications.

Contribution

The paper provides analytical and numerical solutions for surfactant-laden droplet dynamics under non-isothermal conditions, highlighting the impact of Marangoni stresses and temperature gradients.

Findings

Surfactants can retard or enhance droplet velocity depending on temperature gradient direction.

Presence of surfactants can cause change in droplet motion direction under certain conditions.

Analytical solutions match well with numerical results across surface Peclet numbers.

Abstract

The motion of a surfactant-laden viscous droplet in the presence of background non-isothermal Poiseuille flow is studied analytically and numerically. Specifically, the effect of interfacial Marangoni stress due to non-uniform distribution of surfactants and temperature at the droplet interface on the velocity and direction of motion of the droplet along the centerline of imposed Poiseuille flow is investigated in the presence of linearly varying temperature field. In the absence of thermal convection, fluid inertia and shape deformation, the interfacial transport of bulk-insoluble surfactants is governed by the surface Peclet number which represents the relative strength of the advective transport of surfactant over the diffusive transport. We obtain analytical solution for small and large values of the surface Peclet number. Numerical solution is obtained for arbitrary surface Peclet number, which compares well with the analytical solution. Depending on the direction of temperature gradient with respect to the imposed Poiseuille flow, the surfactant-induced Marangoni stress affects the droplet velocity differently. When the imposed temperature increases in the direction of imposed Poiseuille flow, surfactants retard the droplet motion as compared with a surfactant-free droplet. However, when the imposed temperature decreases in the direction of imposed Poiseuille flow, presence of surfactants may increase or decrease the magnitude of droplet velocity depending on the relevant governing parameters. Further, for particular values of governing parameters, we observe change in direction of droplet motion due to presence of surfactants, which may bear significant consequences in the design of droplet based microfluidic systems.