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arXiv · 1803.05789

Scalings in Coalescence of Liquid Droplets

Xi Xia·Chengming He·Peng Zhang
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Abstract

This letter presents a scaling theory of the coalescence of two viscous spherical droplets. An initial value problem was formulated and analytically solved for the evolution of the radius of a liquid neck formed upon droplet coalescence. Two asymptotic solutions of the initial value problem reproduce the well-known scaling relations in the viscous and inertial regimes. The viscous-to-inertial crossover experimentally observed by Paulsen et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 114501 (2011)] manifests in the theory, and their fitting relation, which shows collapse of data of different viscosities onto a single curve, is an approximation to the general solution of the initial value problem.

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Xi Xia, Chengming He, Peng Zhang. 2018-03-15. Scalings in Coalescence of Liquid Droplets. https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05789

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