Non-monotonic viscous dissipation of bouncing droplets undergoing off-center collision

Abstract

The off-center collision of binary bouncing droplets of equal size was studied numerically by a volume-of-fluid method with two marker functions, which has been justified and validated by comparing with available experimental results. A nonmonotonic kinetic energy (KE) recovery with varying impact parameters was discovered. This can be explained by the prolonged entanglement time and the enhanced internal-flow-induced viscous dissipation for bouncing droplets at intermediate impact parameters, compared with those at smaller or larger impact parameters. The distribution of the local viscous dissipation rate (VDR) in the droplet interior shows two major concentration areas, and the competition between these two concentration areas accounts for the nonmonotonic viscous dissipation with varying impact parameters. The nonmonotonic KE recovery with varying impact parameters can also be attributed to the competition between the VDR induced by normal strains and shear strains. The nonmonotonicity was further numerically verified for wider ranges of parameters, and a practically useful formula was proposed to correlate the KE dissipation factor with the impact parameter for various Weber numbers and Ohnesorge numbers.