Influence of liquid hydrophobicity and nozzle passage curvature on microfluidic dynamics in a drop ejection process

Abstract

Employing methods of computational fluid dynamics, we investigated the physical phenomena and fluid dynamics of a microfluid during ejection of a droplet with a designed system of a nozzle plate connected to a flat-plate piezoelectric material. A comparison between experimental measurements and numerical simulations was devised to validate the theoretical model. The volume-of-fluid piecewise linear-interface construction (VOF-PLIC) interface-capturing method was adapted to represent the fluid domain and to track the evolution of its free boundaries whereas the continuous surface force (CSF) mode was chosen to model the interfacial physics. The results show that the curvature of the flow channel affects the velocity, period before disintegration, volume of the droplet and number of satellite drops. Increasing the diameter of the orifice increases the volume and decreases the velocity of the droplet. Increasing the amplitude or frequency of the nozzle plate raises the input energy, so increasing the velocity, decreasing the volume and hastening the disintegration of the droplet, but an increased amplitude or frequency increases the number of satellite drops. At the hydrophobic boundary, the velocity increases, the droplet volume decreases and the period before disintegration is abbreviated because of the decreased adhesive force between the fluid and the boundary surface.