Dripping Faucet
Simulation of a droplet formation from a dripping faucet
The formation of droplets from a faucet is widely observed in everyday life. At the end of a tap, a pendant drop forms and grows very slowly until its size exceeds a certain limit. The droplet elongates, forms a neck in the middle and eventually detaches from the faucet. The final breakup process is a critical phenomenon connected to a singularity of the nonlinear Navier-Stokes equation with interface. It is a challenging issue to address for a numerical or analytical method.
A numerical treatment for interface topology change has been implemented to solve issues like this and we successfully simulated an experiment of water droplet formation from a faucet.
A numerical treatment for interface topology change has been implemented to solve issues like this and we successfully simulated an experiment of water droplet formation from a faucet.
Droplet formation from a faucet and the generation of satellite droplets. (interface in blue and the computational mesh in red)
The simulation results are superposed on the photograph from the experiment of Peregrine et al. (1990)