TY - JOUR
AU1 - Helmers, Thorben
AU2 - Kemper, Philip
AU3 - Thöming, Jorg
AU4 - Mießner, Ulrich
AB - Droplets of microscopic Taylor flows can act as stirred batch microreactors, while the continuous phase compartments supply good mixing and mass transfer to the channel walls. The design of reliable reactors, however, requires a priori information about droplet formation frequency and droplet length, which is difficult to obtain. Here, we report about a new method to reliably describe the droplet deformation, which could act as a flow indicator. The flow-related interface shape deforma - tion of liquid–liquid Taylor flows in square micro channels for Re < 5 and Ca < 0.02 is quantified by experimental studies and ensemble image averaging. We deduce an easy-to-access droplet cap deformation model, which allows reducing the complex interface curvature information to an ellipse and provide correlation functions to link this deformation ratio to the flow conditions quantitatively. In addition, we introduce an experimental approach using a ternary liquid–liquid material system that allows adjusting Re and Ca numbers independently without surfactant addition by changing the mass fraction of two liquids forming the continuous phase. In combination, we suggest an image processing method to overcome the optical issues arising from the poor image contrast of Taylor droplets with low differences of refractive index to the 
TI - Determining the flow-related cap deformation of Taylor droplets at low Ca numbers using ensemble-averaged high-speed images
JF - Experiments in Fluids
DO - 10.1007/s00348-019-2757-7
DA - 2019-06-18
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/determining-the-flow-related-cap-deformation-of-taylor-droplets-at-low-1CEjZ1TUfA
SP - 1
EP - 17
VL - 60
IS - 7
DP - DeepDyve
ER -