A vortex formation in thin liquid films: The coalescence process between clusters of drops with the finite volume method

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Acevedo-Malavé, Alejandro

Affiliations: Centro Multidisciplinario de Ciencias, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), Mérida 5101, Venezuela | E-mail: aacevedo.malave@gmail.com

Abstract: A computational fluid dynamics approach is employed in this paper for the modeling of the coalescence phenomenon between many drops. Therefore, drops of water immersed in a hydrocarbon phase (n-heptane) were defined inside the flow solver. This numerical approach is based on the finite volume method and some value for the initial velocity of coalescence was chosen. Due to this value of the velocity of collision some scenarios arise where can be seen the formation of vortexes at many zones of the system. The streamlines were computed inside the drops and the dynamics of the coalescence can be understood in terms of this. In the model reported here the surface tension and the gravity forces are included.

Keywords: Numerical simulation, finite volume method, Navier-Stokes, coalescence, droplets

DOI: 10.3233/JCM-170744

Journal: Journal of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 611-624, 2017