A sharp immersed method for electrohydrodynamic flows accompanied by charge evaporation

Abstract

This article presents a sharp immersed method for simulating electrohydrodynamic (EHD) flows that involve charge evaporation. This well-known multi-scale, multi-physics problem is widely used in various fields, including industry and medicine. The method adopts a fully sharp model, where surface tension and Maxwell stress are treated as surface forces and free charges are concentrated on the zero thickness liquid-vacuum interface. Incorporating charge evaporation imposes strict restrictions on the time-step, as the rate of evaporation sharply increases with surface evolution. To overcome this challenge, an iterative algorithm that couples the electric field and surface charge density is proposed to obtain accurate results, even with significantly large time-steps. To mitigate the numerical residuals near the interface, which may introduce parasitic flows and cause numerical instability, an immersed interface method-based iterative projection method for the Navier–Stokes equations is proposed, in which a traction boundary condition involving multiple surface forces is imposed on the sharp interface. Numerical experiments were carried out, and the results show that the method is splitting-error-free and stable. The sharp immersed method is applied to simulate the electric-induced deformation of an ionic liquid drop with charge evaporation. The results indicate that charge evaporation can suppress the sharp development of Taylor cones at the ends of the drops. These findings have significant implications for the design and optimization of EHD systems in various applications.