The Experimental Verification of Electrodeformation and Electrocoalescence Numerical Simulation Based on the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian Method

Under the action of a strong electric field, conducting droplets suspended in a dielectric liquid deform, attract each other, and can merge after their touching. The latter processes are called electrodeformation and electrocoalescence. The arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian method is one of the available approaches to simulate two-phase media, which has one crucial advantage over other techniques: it lets describing step-change in liquid properties when crossing the interface between two fluids. However, it generally fails to describe processes of volume merging or separation (i.e., changing topology). Suggested here is a computational model, where the idea of how-to-describe topology change during electrocoalescence is implemented. Moreover, numerical results were experimentally verified, which enables the model using to describe electrohydrodynamic processes in two-phase immiscible liquids and, in particular, electrocoalescence.