A numerical study on the parameters affecting droplet breakup and coalescence using extended finite element method (XFEM)

In present work, it was focused on the recent numerical simulation results of our group on the breakup and coalescence of droplets in two phase system. The Navier-Stokes equations were solved by a characteristic based split (CBS) algorithm based on the projection method. The velocity and pressure field are enriched by using XFEMconcept and the interface is represented by the level set methods. As expected, the XFEM led to accurate results which were in agreement with experimental ones. It was shown that the decreasing the droplets viscosity ratio for fixed droplet size led to decrease shape relaxation time. This effect could facilitate both coalescence and breakup processes.

Keywords:

droplet breakup , droplets coalescence , XFEM , level set , CBS method