Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE DROPLET FORMATION IN MICROCHANNELS WITH T-JUNCTION
Submission Author:
Angel Mora , PR
Co-Authors:
Ana Silva, Sandro Metrevelle Marcondes de Lima e Silva
Presenter: Angel Mora
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0518
Abstract
The influence of capillary number and flow rate ratio between the continuous and dispersed phase in the droplets formation is an important issue in the study of microfluidic. This paper describes numerically the droplets formation in microchannels with T-junction. The simulations are done in a microchannel of 400 x 400 μm, using two immiscible liquids with different flow rate ratio and viscosities. The simulations were performed with the open software OpenFOAM, in which the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is implemented in interDyMFoam solver. To achieve a correct representation of the liquid/liquid interface the simulations were carried out using local grid refinement. Furthermore, the tool was used snappyHexmesh for greater refinement near the walls of the microchannel and thus to model the existing thin liquid layer formed between the droplet and the wall. The results show that the droplet size depends strongly on the number of capillary and on the flow rate ratio and to a lesser extent of the viscosities rate ratio. According to the literature, it is possible to predict the droplet behavior after the junction as a function of the number of capillary and the parameters such as the rate ratio flow and the viscosity. The results were in agreement with numerical data of the literature.
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