Effect of Encapsulated Polymers and Nanoparticles on Deformation of Droplets

We investigate the effects of polymer chains and nanoparticles on the deformation of a droplet in shear and extensional flow using computational modeling; Our model accounts for both the solid and fluid phases explicitly. We show that under shear flow, both the nanoparticles and the encapsulated polymers reduce the shear-induced deformation of the droplet at intermediate capillary numbers; nevertheless, long polymer chains can induce the breakup of the droplet at high capillary numbers. In contrast, under extensional flow we find that the long polymer chains inhibit the breakup and reduce deformation. We study the chain-length and concentration dependence and also present the effects of various parameters such as the wetting strength.