Universality in the viscous-to-inertial coalescence of liquid droplets

Xi Xia, Chengming He, Peng Zhang

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

62 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We present a theory on the coalescence of 2 spherical liquid droplets that are initially stationary. The evolution of the radius of a liquid neck formed upon coalescence was formulated as an initial value problem and then solved to yield an exact solution without free parameters, with its 2 asymptotic approximations reproducing the well-known scaling relations in the inertially limited viscous and inertial regimes. The viscous-to-inertial crossover observed in previous research is also recovered by the theory, rendering the collapse of data of different viscosities onto a single curve.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)23467-23472
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume116
Issue number47
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Keywords

  • Droplet coalescence
  • Scaling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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