Abstract Physical properties and especially the size of drops are important parameters in many industrial and medical applications. High voltage electric field is one of the effective means to control the final size of drops during the fabrication process which could greatly influence the final size of the product. Therefore a detailed study of electric field effect on a liquid drop is very important. In this work deformation and fragmentation of a falling droplet under gravity and electric force have been studied numerically. Electric force is used as an effective external controlling mechanism to influence the deformation of a drop. The three-dimensional deformation of a falling droplet is studied numerically using the open-source volume-of-fluid solver, Gerris. The numerical results are compared with previous analytical, experimental and numerical data and great agreements between the results are obtained. The results are presented for broad range of Bond numbers (Bo) from low Bond number (drop with small deformation) to large Bond number (drop breakup and fragmentation). The results revealed that the electric field can be used as a powerful controlling tool in delaying and expediting the falling drop breakup process. The results also showed that falling drop deforms severely by increasing Bo number which leads to the breakup and fragmentation compared to the cases of low Bo number in which the drop deforms mildly without breakup.

中文翻译：

---

电场作用下落下液滴变形破碎模拟

摘要 物理特性，尤其是液滴的大小是许多工业和医疗应用中的重要参数。高压电场是制造过程中控制液滴最终尺寸的有效手段之一，对产品的最终尺寸影响很大。因此，详细研究电场对液滴的影响非常重要。在这项工作中，对重力和电力作用下下落液滴的变形和破碎进行了数值研究。电力被用作影响液滴变形的有效外部控制机制。使用开源的流体体积求解器 Gerris 对落下的液滴的三维变形进行了数值研究。数值结果与先前的分析比较，获得了实验和数值数据以及结果之间的巨大一致性。结果显示了从低键数（小变形下降）到大键数（液滴破裂和破碎）的广泛范围的键数 (Bo)。结果表明，电场可以作为一种强有力的控制工具来延迟和加速落滴破碎过程。结果还表明，与低 Bo 数的情况相比，下降的液滴通过增加 Bo 数而严重变形，导致破碎和破碎。结果表明，电场可以作为一种强有力的控制工具来延迟和加速落滴破碎过程。结果还表明，与低 Bo 数的情况相比，下降的液滴通过增加 Bo 数而严重变形，导致破碎和破碎。结果表明，电场可以作为一种强有力的控制工具来延迟和加速落滴破碎过程。结果还表明，与低 Bo 数的情况相比，下降的液滴通过增加 Bo 数而严重变形，导致破碎和破碎。