2025/05/21 by Pijush Patra, Patra, Pijush, Anubhab Roy +3
Engineering · #Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph) #Electrohydrodynamics and Fluid Dynamics #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer #Particle Dynamics in Fluid Flows
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.16010
openalex publication_date 2025/05/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the dynamics of collisions between a pair of uncharged conducting droplets under the influence of a uniaxial compressional flow and an external electric field. The near-field asymptotic expression for the electric-field-induced attractive force demonstrate that surface-to-surface contact in finite time is facilitated by overcoming lubrication resistance. We demonstrate the significant role of the external electric field on the relative trajectories of two droplets in a compressional flow and provide estimates of the correlation between collision efficiency and the forces induced by the electric field. For droplet collisions in clouds, continuum lubrication approximations become inadequate to capture collision dynamics, and thus we incorporate non-continuum lubrication interactions into our analysis to address this complexity. Our findings reveal the dependence of collision efficiency on the strength of the electric field, geometry of the two interacting droplets, non-continuum effects, and van der Waals forces.