Making a splash

That in the ocean seeks another drop …”
– Shakespeare

A KAUST doctoral student has run a simulation on the Noor computer cluster which is bringing new understanding in fluid dynamics. Marie-Jean Thoraval’s work simulates the vortices and eddies produced when a single droplet hits a pool of still liquid. The work, published in Physical Review Letters in June, was done in collaboration with fellow scientists from France, Japan and New Zealand.

Thoraval, who came to KAUST after completing his master’s at the École Polytechnique in Paris, created a model to simulate the splash of a single drop on impact. “I returned to Paris to learn to use the code which is the basis of this simulation,” Thoraval told The Beacon. “This model corresponds closely with images of the same event taken by a high-speed camera”.

“The fundamental dynamics of these splashing effects appear to have similarities with airflow effects, such as the swirls that occur when air flows past a telephone wire,” added Thoraval’s supervisor, Professor Sigurdur Thoroddsen. “The possibility of such phenomena occurring in a droplet impact had not been considered until these results were seen in simulations at KAUST. Of course, because of the massive computation capacity required, we can study only one isolated droplet at this high resolution.”

This fundamental research at KAUST may yield lessons of general value that can be used in industrial models and perhaps in processes such as spray coating. Currently, industrial studies elsewhere focus on such processes as sprays in fuel-injectors, using statistical models of distribution of droplets, but do not go into this detail.