Motion of non-wetting drop in constricted geometry

• Experimental and numerical visualisation of drop deformation in confined domain.
• Numerical visualisation of breakup of non-wetting drop.
• Displacement velocity of non-wetting drop in confined domain versus gap size.
• Taylor's deformation of the drop versus gap size.
• Breakup of non-wetting drop under the influence of confinement.
• Influence of the surrounding fluid velocity on deformation of non-wetting drop.

This work is a contribution to the study of deformation of a non-wetting drop transported under the combined effect of gravity and permanent fluid motion in a vertical channel. The deformation being caused during passage of the drop through a constriction formed by two spherical obstacles placed opposite in a vertical channel. For this purpose a three-dimensional computation is conducted in order to illustrate the behavior of the drop in the condition of non-wettability. The flow based on Navier–Stokes equation is solved numerically with volume of fluid (VOF) method. The corresponding simulations are carried out in view to analyse the behavior of the drop when it is forced to move between the obstacles for different values gap size until the breakup is obtained.