New Approaches for the Interface Reconstruction and Surface Force Computation for Volume of Fluid Simulations of Droplet Interaction of Immiscible Liquids

TL;DR

This paper introduces advanced interface reconstruction and surface force computation methods for Volume of Fluid simulations, enabling accurate modeling of immiscible droplet interactions with complex phenomena like triple lines and thin films.

Contribution

It presents novel interface reconstruction and surface force models tailored for three-component cells, improving simulation accuracy for immiscible droplet collisions.

Findings

Simulations closely match experimental data across various collision regimes.

The new methods accurately predict droplet collision outcomes and regime boundaries.

Enhanced models improve the representation of thin films and triple line dynamics.

Abstract

The complexity of binary droplet collisions increases for the collision of immiscible liquids with the occurrence of triple lines and thin encapsulating films. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is extended with an efficient interface reconstruction applicable to three-component cells of arbitrary configuration. Together with an enhanced Continuous Surface Stress (CSS) model for accurate surface force computation, which was gained by the introduction of a film stabilisation approach, this enables the simulation of the interaction of two droplets of immiscible liquids. With the new methods, simulations of binary droplet collisions of fully wetting liquids were performed with excellent agreement to experimental data in different collision regimes regarding both the morphology and the prediction of the regime boundaries for head-on as well as off-centre collisions.