The complexity of binary droplet collisions increases for the collision of immiscible liquids with the occurrence of triple lines and thin encapsulating films. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is extended with an efficient interface reconstruction applicable to three-component cells of arbitrary configuration. Together with an enhanced Continuous Surface Stress (CSS) model for accurate surface force computation, which was gained by the introduction of a film stabilisation approach, this enables the simulation of the interaction of two droplets of immiscible liquids. With the new methods, simulations of binary droplet collisions of fully wetting liquids were performed with excellent agreement to experimental data in different collision regimes regarding both the morphology and the prediction of the regime boundaries for head-on as well as off-centre collisions.
The complexity of binary droplet collisions strongly increases in case of immiscible liquids with the occurrence of triple lines or for high energetic collisions, where strong rim instabilities lead to the spattering of satellite droplets. To cope with such cases, the Volume of Fluid method is extended by an efficient interface reconstruction, also applicable to multi-material cells of arbitrary configuration, as well as an enhanced continuous surface stress model for accurate surface force computations, also applicable to thin films. For collisions of fully wetting liquids, excellent agreement to experimental data is achieved in different collision regimes. High-resolution simulations predict droplet collisions in the spattering regime and provide detailed insights into the evolution of the rim instability. Another challenge is the numerical prediction of the collision outcome in the bouncing or coalescence region, where the rarefied gas dynamics in the thin gas film determines the collision result. To this end, an important step forward became possible by modelling the pressure in the gas film. With the introduction of an interior collision plane within the flow domain, it is now possible to simulate droplet collisions with gas film thickness reaching the physically relevant length scale.
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