New Hydrodynamic Mechanism for Drop Coarsening

Vadim Nikolayev (1) , Daniel Beysens (2, 3, 1) , Patrick Guenoun (1)

1 SPEC - UMR3680 - Service de physique de l'état condensé
2 SBT - Service des Basses Températures
3 PMMH - Physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogenes (UMR 7636)

We discuss a new mechanism of drop coarsening due to coalescence only, which describes the late stages of phase separation in fluids. Depending on the volume fraction of the minority phase, we identify two different regimes of growth, where the drops are interconnected and their characteristic size grows linearly with time, and where the spherical drops are disconnected and the growth follows (time) 1/3. The transition between the two regimes is sharp and occurs at a well defined volume fraction of order 30%.

Mots clés: phase separation; drop coarsening; hydrodynamic interaction

Domaines: Dynamique des Fluides [physics.flu-dyn]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]

Vadim Nikolayev, Daniel Beysens, Patrick Guenoun. New Hydrodynamic Mechanism for Drop Coarsening. Physical Review Letters, 1996, ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.3144⟩. ⟨hal-01261245⟩