Thermocapillary migration and interaction of drops: two non-merging drops in an aligned arrangement

A numerical study on the interaction of two spherical drops in thermocapillary migration in microgravity is presented. Unequal drop sizes in the axisymmetric model lead to strong drop interaction if the leading drop is smaller. The effect of the ratio of the two drop radii, their initial distance apart, and non-dimensional numbers on the interaction is studied in the case of non-merging drops in detail. The Marangoni number adopted in this paper is fairly large (around 100) so as to reveal the phenomena of real flows. As a result, the heat wake behind the leading drop plays an important role in drop interaction, and obviously different final drop distances and transient migration processes are observed for various sets of non-dimensional numbers. The influence of drop deformation on drop interaction is also investigated for relatively large capillary number (up to 0.2). Finally, some simulations are performed to explain the phenomena of drop interaction in previous experiments, and some suggestions for future experiments are also provided