In this thesis, we develop a physical understanding of the effects of viscosity and geometry on the dynamics of interfacial flows in drops and bubbles.
We first consider the coalescence of pairs of conical water droplets surrounded by air.
Droplet pairs can form cones under the influence of an electric field and have been observed to coalesce or recoil depending on the angle of this cone.
With high resolution numerical simulations we show the coalescence and non-coalescence of these drop pairs is negligibly affected by the electric field and can be understood through a purely hydrodynamic process.
The coalescence and recoil dynamics are shown to be self similar, demonstrating that for these conical droplet pairs viscosity has a negligible effect on the observed behavior.
We generalize this result to the coalescence and recoil of droplets with different cone angles, and focus on droplets coalescing with a liquid bath and flat substrate.
From the simulations of these droplets with different cone angles, an equivalent angle is found that describes the coalescence and recoil behavior for all water cones of any cone angle.
While viscosity is found to negligibly affect the coalescence of conical water drops, it plays a key role in regulating the coalescence process of bursting gas bubbles.
When these gas bubbles burst, a narrow liquid jet is formed that can break up into tiny liquid jet drops.
Through consideration of the effects of viscosity, we show that these jet drops can be over an order of magnitude smaller than previously thought.
Here, viscosity plays a key role in balancing surface tension and inertial forces and determining the size of the jet drops.
Finally, we investigate the drainage of surfactant free, ultra-viscous bubbles where surface tension serves only to set the initial shape of the bubble.
We use interferometry to find the thickness profiles of draining bubble films up to the point the of rupture.
A theoretical film drainage model considering the balance of viscous and gravitational stresses is developed and numerically computed.
The numerical results are found to be consistent with the experimentally obtained thickness profiles.
In this work we provide insight into the role of viscosity in the outlined interfacial flows.
The results of this thesis will advance the understanding of drop production in clouds, the marine climate, and the degassing of glass melts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/13677 |
| Date | 28 October 2015 |
| Creators | Bartlett, Casey Thomas |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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