Electrohydrodynamic settling of drop in uniform electric field at low and moderate Reynolds numbers

TL;DR

This study investigates the electrohydrodynamic behavior of liquid drops settling under gravity in a uniform electric field, considering significant charge convection and electric field effects at low and moderate Reynolds numbers, with analytical and numerical approaches.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analytical and numerical analysis of drop settling with significant charge convection, improving upon previous models and exploring effects at moderate Reynolds numbers.

Findings

Surface charge convection influences settling speed.

Deformation and velocity are significantly affected by charge convection.

Theoretical results align well with numerical simulations.

Abstract

Dynamics of a liquid drop falling through a quiescent medium of another liquid is investigated in external uniform electric field. The electrohydrodynamics of a drop is governed by inherent deformability of the drop (defined by capillary number), the electric field strength (defined by Masson number) and the surface charge convection (quantified by electric Reynolds number). Surface charge convection generates nonlinearilty in a electrohydrodynamics problem by coupling the electric field and flow field. In Stokes limit, most existing theoretical models either considered weak charge convection or weak electric field to solve the problem. In the present work, gravitational settling of the drop is investigated analytically and numerically in Stokes limit considering significant electric field strength and surface charge convection. Drop deformation accurate upto higher order is calculated analytically in small deformation regime. Our theoretical results show excellent agreement with the numerical and shows improvement over previous theoretical models. For drops falling with moderate Reynolds number, the effect of Masson number on transient drop dynamics is studied for (i) perfect dielectric drop in perfect dielectric medium (ii) leaky dielectric drop in the leaky dielectric medium. For the latter case transient deformation and velocity obtained for significant charge convection is compared with that of absence in charge convection which is the novelty of our study. The present study suggests that for both the regimes, surface charge convection tends to increase or decrease the settling speed depending upon the ratios of electrical properties. Notably, in the inertial regime, deformation and velocity are seen to be altered prominently in the existence of significant charge convection.