MDPD Simulation of Liquid Thread Break-up and Formation of Droplets

The breakup of liquid threads is a fundamental process in nature and relevant for many industrial

applications, such as drug manufacturing, inkjet printing, and nanowire fabrication. The classi-

cal theory used to describe the breakup of liquid threads has its origins in the works of Rayleigh

and Plateau. By means of linear stability analysis, they have shown that a fluid cylinder is un-

stable for perturbations characterised by a wavelength larger than its circumference. Moreover,

there is a characteristic wavelength that the perturbations are the most unstable. In our study,

we have employed large-scale mesoscale simulations of a coarse-grained model to determine

the characteristic wavelength of liquid nanothreads within the statistical uncertainty for a range

of fluids, characterised by different Ohnesorge numbers and accessible to our model. Also, we

have identified the mechanisms of satellite-droplets formation and characterised their proper-

ties. We anticipate that our study contributes to the understanding of a fundamental process in

nature and paves the way for further developments in this area for relevant applications.