Boundary Layer Flow About and Inside a Liquid Sphere

Abstract

A finite-difference scheme has been developed to solve the boundary-layer equations governing laminar flows around and inside a spherical fluid droplet moving steadily in another immiscible fluid. Using this scheme, results not available in the literature have been obtained for circulating droplets at intermediate and high interior-to-exterior viscosity ratios (μ*) and large values of the external flow Reynolds number (Re). Detailed results over the range 1.01 ≤ μ* ≤ ∞ (solid sphere) and 100 ≤ Re ≤ 10000 are presented for the velocity profiles outside and inside the droplet, the interface shear stress, the external flow separation angle, the droplet surface velocity and the drag coefficient.