Marangoni Motion of a Droplet in a Constriction

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the motion due to the thermocapillary force of a droplet in a circular tube through the front-tracking-based simulation. The tube profile in the axial direction is generated with a sinusoidal function that induces a constriction with depth d at the middle. The droplet is slowed down as it migrates from the cold region (ahead of the constriction) to the hot region in the downstream. Various parameters including the Marangoni number Ma, the capillary number Ca and the depth of the constriction d are varied to better understand the thermocapillary motion of the droplet under the influence of the constriction. The simulation results show that when the Ma number increases, the influence factor of the constriction increases and the migration velocity of the droplet decreases. Increasing the depth of the constriction decreases the migration velocity of the droplet.