Breakup of a poorly conducting liquid thread subject to a radial electric field at zero Reynolds number

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-3-2012

Abstract

We study the breakup of an axisymmetric viscous liquid thread with finite conductivity immersed in another viscous fluid, which are confined to a concentrically placed cylindrical electrode that is held at a constant voltage potential. The annular fluid between the core thread and the electrode is assumed to be insulating. The flow then is driven by a radial electric field together with capillary and viscous forces. A linear stability analysis is carried out when the perturbation on the thread interface is small and nonlinear evolution and satellite drop formation near pinch-off are investigated by direct numerical simulations based on boundary integral method. The numerical results reveal that satellite formation as well as breakup time is affected significantly when the effect of charge convection is important compared with electric conduction. For large conduction, the evolutions of the thread are close to those obtained for a perfectly conducting core fluid. Finally, we show numerically that the local dynamics may be altered when the conduction is weak compared to the perfect conductor limit. New scalings near breakup are obtained from a long wave model. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Identifier

84868613538 (Scopus)

Publication Title

Physics of Fluids

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4757388

ISSN

10706631

Issue

10

Volume

24

Fund Ref

National Science Foundation

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