Study on droplet deformation in contraction microchannel

Abstract

Microfluidics systems based on two-phase fluid dynamics have been widely applied from industrial machinery to the aerospace and automotive applications. The systems are designed to handle small volumes of liquids, often in the microliter or even nanoliter range. Droplet-based microfluidics is used for biochemical analysis or materials synthesis as well. The effectiveness of the interactive manipulation between two fluidic phases was significantly impacted by the droplet dynamics of deformation. This research aims to describe the droplet deformation for a wide range of parameters such as capillary number, viscosity ratio, and entry angle in a contraction microchannel. The results show that, droplet deformation is significantly influenced by the parameter mentioned above.

Keywords

• droplet dynamics
• contraction microchannel
• droplet-based microfluidics
• numerical simulation
• capillary number