Prediction of Newtonian Droplet Breaking Time from a Capillary at Low Weber Numbers
Peifeng Lin, Qi Chen, Youju Liu, Xiao Hu, Zuchao Zhu
Abstract
Droplet formation and growth processes have numerous scientific and industrial applications. Experimental and numerical studies on the formation, growth, and breaking of droplet are carried out in present work. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experiment. This work focused on the effect of different Weber numbers (We) on the droplet breaking time. The results show when We < 0.05, the length and volume of the droplet increase, and the breaking time decreases rapidly. The resultant force acting on the main droplet suddenly drops around the critical breaking time. The difference rate between the time tn (when the resultant force is zero) and the breaking time tb is less than 8.49%. For the dimensional analysis of the numerical results, a prediction formula of breaking time on the Weber number is modeled as aWeb + c for We < 0.5.