C. W. Zhao, C. Gentric, N. Dietrich, Y. G. Ma, and Huai Z. Li

Physics of Fluids 29, 072108 (2017); doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4995476

ABSTRACT
The present study aims at investigating the deformation mechanism of liquid-liquid interfaces by both the experimental and numerical approaches. The experiments reveal that the topology of an initial flat interface composed of Newtonian aqueous and Newtonian oil phases can be modulated as climbing or descending along a rotating rod according to the ratio of the kinematic viscosity between these two liquid phases. The measurements of the fluid flow fields by particle image velocimetry highlight the relationship between the appearance of the Taylor-Couette instability in the less viscous phase and the interface’s orientation. The increasing rod rotation speed expands the Taylor-Couette vortices and then intensifies the magnitude of the interface deformation. The numerical simulation by the volume of fluid method is in qualitative agreement with the experimental results, in particular the interface shape and the qualitative influence of different parameters, even under very high rotation speeds of the rod.