Study of liquid-liquid slug break up mechanism in a microchannel T-junction at various modified weber number

The formation of immiscible liquid slugs shows various potential applications in different fields because of absolute control of the species both spatially and temporally, as well as enhanced mixing efficiency. Although applications of droplet/slug based microfluidics have been widely demonstrated, the fundamental physics governing slug/ droplet break-up remains to be an area of active research. This study defines an effective Weber Number (Weeff) that characterizes the interplay of interfacial tension, shear stress and dynamic pressure in the micro-channel. Qualitative results show that, at relatively low Weeff, hydrodynamic force plays an important role in slug break- up at the micro-channel T-junction. At intermediate Weeff, both shear force and hydrodynamic force play an equally important role in slug break up. At relatively high Weeff, shear force is dominant in slug break up at the T-junction