Tuesday, 1 November 2005 - 4:35 PM
259e

Surfactant Effects on Highly Nonequilibrium Surfaces: Surfactants and Drop Detachment

Fang Jin1, Nivedita Gupta2, and Kathleen J. Stebe1. (1) Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, (2) University of New Hampshire, Department of Chemical Engineering, Durham, NH 03824

When a viscous drop is injected into a viscous fluid, the drop evolves to form a distended shape that detaches via the rapid formation and pinching of a neck. We study how this process is altered by the presence of surfactant numerically. When surfactant adsorption-desorption is very slow, interfaces dilute significantly during drop expansion, and drops form necks which are only slightly perturbed in their dynamics from the surfactant-free case. When adsorption-desorption dynamics are comparable to the rate of expansion, drops break at the primary neck at low surfactant coverage, at a secondary neck at moderate coverages, or fail to neck at elevated coverages. When surfactant adsorption-desorption kinetics are rapid, the surface remains in equilibrium with the surrounding solution, and drops break like surfactant-free drops with a uniform surface tension. These arguments are used to construct a phase diagram of drop break-up modes as a function of surfactant sorption dynamics.

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