Mechanisms of spontaneous chain formation and subsequent microstructural evolution in shear- driven strongly confined drop monolayers

Published

May 18, 2019

Author(s)

Sagnik Singha, Abhilash R. Malipeddi, Mauricio Zurita-Gotor, Kausik Sarkar, Kevin Shen, Michael Loewenberg, Kalman D. Migler, Jerzy Blawzdziewicz

Abstract

It was experimentally demonstrated by Migler and his collaborators [Phys. Rev. Lett. 2001, 86, 1023; Langmuir 2003, 19, 8667] that a strongly confined drop monolayer sheared between two parallel plates can spontaneously develop a flow-oriented drop-chain morphology. Here we show that the formation of the chain-like microstructure is driven by Hele-Shaw quadrupolar interactions between drops, and that drop spacing within chains is controlled by the effective drop repulsion associated with the existence of confinement-induced reversing streamlines, i.e., the swapping trajectory effect. Using direct numerical simulations and an accurate quasi-2D model that incor-porates quadrupolar and swapping-trajectory contributions, we analyze microstructural evolution in a monodisperse drop monolayer. Consistent with experimental observations, we find that drop spacing within individual chains is usually uniform. Further analysis shows that at low area frac-tions all chains have the same spacing, but at higher area fractions there is a large spacing variation from chain to chain. These findings are explained in terms of uncompressed and com-pressed chains. At low area fractions most chains are uncompressed (spacing equals lst, which is the stable separation of an isolated pair). At higher area fractions compressed chains (with tighter spacing) are formed in a process of chain zipping along y-shaped structural defects. We also discuss the relevance of our findings to other shear-driven systems, such as suspensions of spheres in non-Newtonian fluids.

Citation

Soft Matter

Volume

15

Issue

24

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

droplet, emulsion, shear, numerical simulation

Citation

Singha, S. , Malipeddi, A. , Zurita-Gotor, M. , Sarkar, K. , Shen, K. , Loewenberg, M. , Migler, K. and Blawzdziewicz, J. (2019), Mechanisms of spontaneous chain formation and subsequent microstructural evolution in shear- driven strongly confined drop monolayers, Soft Matter, [online], https://doi.org/10.1039/c9sm00536f (Accessed December 4, 2024)