2.2. Numerical Simulations and Results
We numerically investigate a two-dimensional axisymmetric air filament embedded in a denser environment. The initial length and diameter of the air filament are
and
, see
Figure 1 (a). The length of filament at any arbitrary time is given by
, depicted in
Figure 1 (b). A fixed value of the diameter
mm is considered. The computational domain has dimensions of
, with the bottom boundary corresponding to the symmetrical axis of the filament. Free-slip boundary conditions are applied to the other boundaries, and the filament is centered in the middle of the computational domain (
). The dynamics of the air filament are characterized by the associated Ohnesorge number
and its initial aspect ratio
. The liquid/gas physical parameters used are summarized in
Table 1
A mesh independence study is first performed using an adaptive mesh up to a maximum number of
with the level
, for simulations with
and
. The simulations are run up to the first bubble separation and its radius is compared using the result at
as a reference value. As shown in
Figure 2, less than 0.1% of error is obtained at
. For the sake of computational resources, the adaptive mesh refinement with a maximum number of
will be used for the following computations. This corresponds to a minimum mesh size
. The air filament contracts due to surface tension effects. As the filament’s tails retract, two bulges form at its end, gathering the displaced inner gas.
The radius of the bulge increases over time and is denoted by
, as illustrated
Figure 1 (b). In the case of long air filaments, a neck connecting the bulges to the filament forms, corresponding to the minimum radius along the filament, denoted as
. It is important to note that the location of
along the filament can change with time and does not necessarily correspond to the neck, as we will observe later.
We conduct simulations for
ranging from [0.001:10], and
[6:15], covering the transitional regime. Four distinct breakup behaviors: No-Breakup, Neck-Reopening-Middle-Pinching, Middle-Pinching, and End-Pinching can be observed. These different outcomes of the air filament dynamics are shown on the phase diagram, see
Figure 3. We categorize this phase diagram into different regimes, namely I, II, III, and IV, based on distinct breakup behaviors. Regime I shows the neck-reopening-middle-pinching, Regime II depicts no-breakup, Regime III shows the middle-pinching, and Regime IV represents end-pinching. At
, a critical limit
is observed for the transition from the neck-reopening regime to the middle-pinching regime. For
≤
, the transition aspect ratio
increases with
, but is constant for
. Regime (I) is bound by a power law of
∼
above which the filament always undergoes end-pinching. At the lower limit, below
∼
, the filament will successfully recoil. In between, the filament always undergoes a neck-reopening-middle-pinching regime. On the contrary, when
>
, a constant transition aspect ratio of
separates the recoiling and middle pinching, while
segregates middle pinching from end-pinching.
The time evolution of the bulge radius
is depicted in
Figure 4 for the breakup (including the middle breakup) and no-breakup regimes respectively for
. It’s important to note that the last point on the curves in
Figure 4 (a) and (b) corresponds to the bulge separation time and the bulge collision time, respectively. In the no-breakup regime, notably, the radius of the bulge does not exceed a fixed value of approximately
before the two bulges collide, as shown in
Figure 4 (b) (observed for all the orange square dots in
Figure 3). On the contrary, in the breakup regime, the bulge radius monotonically increases, reaching or even exceeding this value before the separation occurs, as depicted in
Figure 4 (a).
Assuming a uniform velocity within the bulges (provided that the two bulges are not too close to each other), its volume,
, at any time can be estimated by following [
33]:
where
represents half the filament length at the time
t. For large aspect ratios,
i.e. in the end-pinching regime, the bulge will separate when
. At breakup, the bulge volume corresponds to
. It can be easily shown that a sufficient condition for the air filament to break up is
, which implies that
. Therefore, a phenomenological estimate of the limit between breakup and no-breakup can be derived as
. Based on the observations above, one can conclude that no recoiling is observed above
provided that
.
For the neck-reopening-middle-pinching regime, the neck reopens followed by a jump of the
location from the neck position to the middle of the filament where the subsequent separation will occur. The jump distance reveals an intriguing pattern when
is fixed and the
is varied, or vice versa. At a constant
= 0.01, increasing
results in an increase in the jump distance until it reaches a threshold, beyond which the filament shifts to end-pinching from neck-reopening-middle-pinching. This increase in the magnitude of the jump distance is evident in
Figure 5 (a) where the black line represents
= 7.5, the blue line represents
= 8, the green line represents
= 8.5, the red line represents
= 9, and the orange line represents
= 10. At a constant
, an increase in
leads to a decreasing jump distance. This could be seen in
Figure 5 (b) where the black line represents
= 0.01, the blue line represents
= 0.015, the red line represents
= 0.02, the orange line represents
= 0.03, and the green line shows
= 0.04. Further increasing the
causes the filament to recoil.
Figure 6 illustrates the axial velocity field within the air filament for
and
at two different time steps at
(before the reopening of the neck) and
(after neck reopening). At both times, a stagnation point is formed in the middle of the filament, characterized by a zero local velocity. Upon inspecting the velocity field, it becomes apparent how the fluid is expelled from the neck to the bulge and toward the center of the filament. However, despite this, a recirculating flow at the stagnation point counteracts the expelled fluid, causing the neck to reopen. The reopening of the neck was previously observed in the recoiling of liquid filaments, allowing the filament to escape from pinch-off through the formation and the shedding of a vortex ring [
34]. The velocity vectors (not scaled to magnitude) around the stagnation point and the neck region can be observed in Fig
Figure 6.