Breakup Criteria for Confined Droplets: Effects of Compatibilization and Component Viscoelasticity KU Leuven
The breakup of confined droplets was studied systematically for systems with either interfacial or component viscoelasticity. The former was obtained by adding a compatibilizer, the latter by using a viscoelastic fluid as the droplet or as the matrix phase. The critical capillary numbers of Newtonian and compatibilized droplets showed a similar increase with increasing confinement ratio. However, a decrease in breakup length was observed in the ...