Impact of single and two successive droplets on a liquid pool

Abstract

The interaction between droplets and a liquid pool is a widely observed fluid phenomenon with significant relevance to various industrial applications. This study numerically investigates the impact of both a single droplet and two successive droplets on a liquid pool with a fixed thickness. Particular emphasis was focused on the evolution of cavity depth and width during the deformation process. For single droplet impacts, the cavity depth exhibits linear growth with time in the early stage, consistent with predictions based on energy balance. This growth is independent of the Weber number (We) within the explored range of 96<We<345. Similarly, the cavity width shows weak dependence on the Weber number during early development, deviating and reaching a maximum width at later times. The maximum cavity width follows a power-law relationship with the Weber number, with a 0.5 exponent. In the case of successive droplet impacts with small initial separation, cavity depth also evolves linearly with time in the early stage but over an extended period. This prolonged growth is attributed to droplet merging, resulting in an effectively larger merged droplet. However, for successive droplets with large separation, the two linear growth stages exhibit intermittent interruptions due to the second impact occurring at a later time. The variation in cavity width due to different initial spacings between two successive droplets still exhibits similarity until a larger spacing causes a change in the rate of cavity width development.