Numerical Simulation of Electrocapillary Driven Flows

P.      Zhou; C.   W.   Wu

doi:10.2174/1876402910901010057

Abstract

The developed single-component multiphase lattice Boltzmann model (LBM) is used for studying an electrocapillary driven flow. The basic principle of the electrocapillary driven flow is to control the interface tension with electric potential. In the present paper, two pseudo-effective mass of the solid wall are adopted to control the interfacial tension of gas-solid and liquid-solid respectively. This method can independently control the liquid-solid interfacial tensions which is in turn controlled by the applied electric voltage in the electrocapillary driven flow. The numerical results show that the method can simulate the contact angle saturation phenomenon in electrowetting and the capillary flow considering the dynamic contact angle (DCA). We also find here the cosine of the DCA is proportional to the capillary number and the prediction error of the liquid level (in single capillary tube) is close to the inverse of the adopted density ratio.

Keywords: Electrocapillary driven flows, lattice Boltzmann, electrowetting, contact angle, interface tension, multiphase flow, equation of state, capillary tube