A numerical method for the calculation of drag and lift of a deformable droplet in shear flow

We present a new numerical method for the calculation of drag and lift acting on a deformable droplet in linear shear flow. The droplet interface is captured by the level-set (LS) method. In order to determine the acting force on a droplet in shear flow field, we adopt the feedback forces which can maintain the particle position while efficiently handling deformation. The stability analysis of the feedback forcing function is performed to provide the precise stability boundaries in the forcing parameter space for the time-advancing scheme used in our study. The present method is applied to simulations of spherical, deformed, and oscillating droplets in uniform flow for validations. The present method is further applied to an investigation of the effects of deformation of a droplet in shear flow. We observed that drag and lift forces acting on a droplet depend strongly on the deformation characteristics.