LBM Study on Rayleigh Instability of a Charged Droplet

摘要

Rayleigh instability of a charged droplet is a well known phenomenon. Although the instabilitycondition was revealed by Lord Rayleigh, how the deformation is developed afterthe unstable state is still remaining as a question because of its dynamic nature. Therefore,a numerical simulative method will help to study the phenomenon. In this paper we reportLBM (Lattice Boltzmann Method) simulation of the Rayleigh instability of a charged droplet.We show an interesting extension of the LBM to involve electrostatic repulsive force working onthe surface of an individual liquid droplet by means of momentum modification. The methodsuccessfully simulates the Rayleigh instability, in which a droplet is stretched its ellipsoidalshape when the electrostatic potential exceeds Rayleigh's threshold, on the contrary, a dropletwith a less potential than the threshold deforms back to a spherical shape as a static form.