Interfacial Effects on Droplet Generation in a T-Junction Microchannel
Over the years, researchers have been investigating a variety of approaches to understand the droplet dynamics in a microchannel due to its vast applications in various fields. At low Reynolds number, surface tension and viscosity dominate the flow in the microchannel. In this study, the effect of interfacial tension on droplet generation in a T-junction microchannel has been studied numerically using the conservative level set method (CLSM) for different Capillary numbers (10-5 ≤ Ca ≤ 1) at a contact angle of
with the finite element method (FEM) based commercial software COMSOL Multiphysics® . The two phase laminar, level set module of COMSOL Multiphysics® are used with time dependant solver: PARDISO to solve the governing equations. Both the continuous and dispersed phases taken as incompressible, immiscible, Newtonian fluids of equal density. A schematic of the droplet generation in T-junction microchannel as shown in Figure. The numerical results have been obtained and presented in terms of phase, velocity, and pressure fields to analyze the droplet generation. The quantitative characterization of droplet in terms of its length and effective diameter is also determined. These results compared with existing experimental and numerical data, and it has a fair agreement with them.
