Deformation of drops by outer eddies in turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how turbulence-induced eddies deform drops by analyzing energy exchanges, revealing that non-local turbulent stretching by outer eddies predominantly causes deformation and breakup.

Contribution

It introduces a new decomposition method to distinguish local and non-local effects on drop deformation in turbulence, supported by direct numerical simulations.

Findings

Non-local eddy stretching dominates drop deformation.

Drop breakup is primarily driven by outer eddies.

The mechanism is consistent across various Weber numbers.

Abstract

Drop deformation in fluid flows is investigated here as an exchange between the kinetic energy of the fluid and the surface energy of the drop. We show analytically that this energetic exchange is controlled only by the stretching (or compression) of the drop surface by the rate-of-strain tensor. This mechanism is analogous to the stretching of the vorticity field in turbulence. Leveraging the non-local nature of turbulence dynamics, we introduce a new decomposition that isolates the energetic exchange due to local drop-induced surface effects, from the non-local action of turbulent fluctuations. We perform direct numerical simulations of single inertial drops in isotropic turbulence and show that an important contribution to the increments of the surface energy arises from the non-local stretching of the fluid-fluid interface by eddies far from the drop surface (outer eddies). We report that this mechanism is dominant and independent of surface dynamics in a range of Weber numbers in which drop breakup occurs. These findings shed new light on drop deformation and breakup in turbulent flows, and open the venue for the improvement and simplification of breakup models.