Journal of the Chinese Institute of Chemical Engineers, Vol.29, No.6, 453-466, 1998
Some solutions of a cell model for a suspension of droplets in thermocapillary motion
The thermocapillary motion of a homogeneous suspension of identical spherical droplets of arbitrary viscosity and thermal conductivity is considered under conditions of vanishingly small Reynolds and Peclet numbers. The effects of interaction of the individual droplets are taken into explicit account by employing a unit cell model which is known to provide good predictions for the sedimentation of a monodisperse suspension of spherical particles. The appropriate equations of conservation of energy and momentum are solved for each cell, in which a spherical droplet is envisaged to be surrounded by a concentric shell of suspending fluid, and the thermocapillary migration velocity of the droplet is calculated for various cases. Analytical expressions of this mean droplet velocity are obtained in closed form as functions of the volume fraction of the droplets. Comparisons between the ensemble-averaged thermocapillary migration velocity of a test droplet in a dilute suspension and our cell-model results are made.
Keywords:CONCENTRATED SUSPENSIONS;THERMAL-GRADIENT;POROUS-MEDIA;2BUBBLES;MIGRATION;PARTICLE;PREDICTION