Mesoscale modeling of near-contact interactions for complex flowing interfaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mesoscale kinetic model for multicomponent flows that captures complex interface dynamics, predicts emulsion viscosity, and simulates soft flowing crystal formation in microfluidics.

Contribution

The model uniquely combines surface tension and near-contact interactions at the mesoscale, enabling accurate simulation of complex fluid interface phenomena.

Findings

Successfully simulates bouncing droplet dynamics.

Quantitatively predicts emulsion effective viscosity.

Models formation of soft flowing crystals.

Abstract

We present a mesoscale kinetic model for multicomponent flows, augmented with a short range forcing term, aimed at describing the combined effect of surface tension and near-contact interactions operating at the fluid interface level. Such mesoscale approach is shown to i) accurately capture the complex dynamics of bouncing colliding droplets for different values of the main governing parameters, ii) predict quantitatively the effective viscosity of dense emulsions in micro-channels and iii) simulate the formation of the so-called soft flowing crystals in microfluidic focusers.