Understanding cavity dynamics near deformable oil drop via numerical simulations

Cavitation is increasingly being used for producing liquid-liquid emulsions. Cavity collapse generates microscale high-speed jets, which play a crucial role in cavitation-driven emulsification. It is thus essential to investigate the interaction of cavity and droplet to improve the understanding of the cavitation-driven emulsification process. In this study, we have numerically investigated the interaction of a single cavity-droplet pair dispersed in a water medium mimicking the scenario occurring inside a hydrodynamic cavitation-based fluidic device. A direct numerical simulation utilizing the multi-fluid, volume of fluid (VOF) method has been used for simulating different scenarios of cavity droplet interactions. The effect of the droplet-cavity size ratio (β) and the stand-off parameter (γ) on cavity-droplet dynamics have been investigated. The influence of these parameters on cavity jet velocity U_max and energy dissipation rate (ε) was evaluated. Cavity jet velocity (U_max) increases at first, then decreases with the stand-off parameter whereas it increases and becomes almost constant for the size ratio. The maximum cavity jet velocity in the present work is obtained for the case β=2.5(γ=0.7) and β=5(γ=1.2). The energy dissipation rate for cavity-oil droplet interaction is of the order 10⁸ m²/s³, irrespective of the stand-off parameter and size ratio for a given driving force. The results presented in this work improve the current fundamental understanding of cavity-drop interactions and provide a useful basis for developing cavitation-induced droplet breakage models for predicting droplet size distributions, enabling enhanced applications of cavitation for emulsification in the chemical industries.