• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.178-185
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• 2009

Simple and highly efficient droplet merging method is proposed, which enables two nanoliter or picoliter droplets to merge regularly in a straight microchannel. Using a cross channel with inflows of one oil phase through the main channel and two water phases through the side channels, two droplets of different sizes can be generated alternatingly in accordance with flow rate difference of the water phases. It is shown that for a fixed oil phase flow rate, the flow rate of one water phase required for alternating droplet generation increases linearly with the flow rate of another water phase. By this method, the droplets are merged with 100 % efficiency without any additional driving forces.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.1752-1757
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• 2008

Simple and highly efficient droplet merging method is proposed, which enables two nanoliter or picoliter droplets to merge regularly in a straight microchannel. We observe that two droplets of the same size but of different viscosities are merged by velocity difference induced as they are transported with the carrier fluid. To make viscosity difference, the mass ratio of water and glycerol is varied. Two droplets of the same size or of different sizes are generated alternatingly in the cross channel by controlling flowrates. This droplet merging method can be used to mix or encapsulate one target sample with another material, so that it can be applied to cell lysis, particle synthesis, drug discovery, hydrogel-bead production, and so on.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.27-34
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• 2012

In this paper an experimental study is presented to investigate the effect of a step edge and a stationary droplet on the dynamic behavior of impacting droplet on a wall. The main parameters are the distance from the edge and the center-to-center distance between two droplets. Photographic images are presented to show coalescence dynamics, shape evolution and contact line movement. The emphasis is on presenting the spreading length of droplet for the step edge and two coalescing droplets along their original centers. It is clarified that the droplet exhibits much different dynamic behavior depending on the location of the step edge. The momentum of impacting droplet was better transferred to the stationary droplet as the center- to-center distance between two droplets was reduced, which results in more spreading of coalescing droplet.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.12
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• pp.74-79
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• 2017

The fire extinguishing performance of hybrid nozzle systems is improved by injecting an extinguishing agent concentrically into the target site and, in this study, water mist is used as a water curtain to confine the droplets of the agent. In this study, we numerically investigated the effect of the foundation angle and injection pressure on the performance of a hybrid nozzle by evaluating the mean radius of the volume fractions of the agent and water mists. An experiment involving a water mist nozzle was carried out to validate the numerical method and then the droplet behaviors, e.g., stochastic collision, coalescence and breakup, were calculated with 2-way interaction Discrete Particle Modeling (DPM) in the steady state for the hybrid nozzle system. The mean radius of the water mists increased by about 40 %, whereas that of the agent decreased by about 21 %, when the injection pressure was increased from 30 bar to 60 bar. In addition, the mean radius of the agent increased by about 24 % as the foundation angle of the hybrid nozzle head increased from $30^{\circ}$ to $60^{\circ}$. As a result, it can be inferred that the injection angle and pressure are important factors for hybrid water mist designs.