Numerical and experimental investigation on static electric charge model at stable cone-jet region

In a typical electro-spinning process, the steady stretching process of the jet beyond the Taylor cone has a significant effect on the dimensions of resulting nanofibers. Also, it sets up the conditions for the onset of the bending instability. The focus of this work is the modeling and simulation of the initial stable jet phase seen during the electro-spinning process. The perturbation method was applied to solve hydrodynamic equations, and the electrostatic equation was solved by a boundary integral method. These equations were coupled with the stress boundary conditions derived appropriate at the fluid-fluid interface. Perturbation equations were discretized by the second-order finite difference method, and the Newton method was implemented to solve the discretized nonlinear system. Also, the boundary element method was utilized to solve the electrostatic equation. In the theoretical study, the fluid is described as a leaky dielectric with charges only on the jet surface in dielectric air. In this study, electric charges were modeled as static. Comparison of numerical and experimental results shows that at low flow rates and high electric field, good agreement was achieved because of the superior importance of the charge transport by conduction rather than convection and charge concentration. In addition, the effect of unevenness of the electric field around the nozzle tip was experimentally studied through plate-plate geometry as well as point-plate geometry