Predictive modelling of agglomeration in spray drying and particle capture in aerosol scavenging requires a fundamental understanding of droplet-particle collisions. The study complements prior work by investigating mid-air collisions between free micron-sized spherical droplets and particles with a size ratio of three. Particle wettability and density are varied to elucidate the mechanisms governing collision outcomes and the role of collision offset. Results show that particle density determines whether a particle is engulfed by the droplet or remains at the droplet interface during capture, while high wettability suppresses particle separation even in glancing collisions. A modified effective Weber number incorporating particle density and wettability is proposed to map collision outcomes. To assess its robustness, the present data are combined with literature results in a unified regime map. The regime boundaries separating collision outcomes collapse when the size ratio and Ohnesorge number are held constant. However, at a given collision offset, variations in size ratio and Ohnesorge number alter the critical effective Weber number for particle separation through changes in collision geometry and viscous resistance.
Details
Title
On Free Moving Micron-Sized Droplet-Particle Collisions
Authors/Creators
Tushar Srivastava
Karrar H Al-Dirawi
Benjamin Lobel
Andrew E Bayly
Publication Details
ArXiv.org
Publisher
Cornell University
Identifiers
991005877710607891
Murdoch Affiliation
School of Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry and Physics