Type: Semester/Master project
Microfluidics plays an important role in advancing precise fluid manipulation technologies at the microscopic scale, allowing innovations across diverse fields such as biotechnology among which is the formation and manipulation of droplets. In this context, the recent paper of Zhou et al. [1] highlights the phenomenon of lateral droplet breakup in T-junctions, which differs from more traditional configurations with square-section channels.
In this work, we propose to numerically simulate this phenomenon for different geometries with the Volume-Of-Fluid (VOF) method for interface capturing and the embedded boundaries method for the 3D geometry definition using the free software Basilisk [2]. We will start by a validation of the numerical method by studying the interface shapes of long gas bubbles in a square capillary and compare them to previous numerical results [3]. We will then conduct numerical simulations based on the experimental data [1] to numerically replicate the lateral breakup process observed experimentally for varying geometries and capillary numbers (Figure 1.).
[1] Zhou, J., Ducimetière, Y.-M., Migliozzi, D., Keiser, L., Bertsch, A., Gallaire, F., and Renaud, P. (2023) P. Phys. Rev. Fluids, 8(5):054201.
[2] http://basilisk.fr/
[3] Magnini, M. and Matar, O. (2020) International Journal of Multiphase Flow, 129:103353.
Supervisors: Tomas Fullana & François Gallaire