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The Inexorable Resistance Of Inertia Determines The Initial Regime Of Drop Coalescence, Joseph Paulsen, Justin C. Burton, Sidney R. Nagel, Santosh Appathurai, Michael T. Harris, Osman A. Basaran

Physics - All Scholarship

Drop coalescence is central to diverse processes involving dispersions of drops in industrial, engineering, and scientific realms. During coalescence, two drops first touch and then merge as the liquid neck connecting them grows from initially microscopic scales to a size comparable to the drop diameters. The curvature of the interface is infinite at the point where the drops first make contact, and the flows that ensue as the two drops coalesce are intimately coupled to this singularity in the dynamics. Conventionally, this process has been thought to have just two dynamical regimes: a viscous and an inertial regime with a …