J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech.

155 (2008) 80–93

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jnnfm

Numerical study on the effect of viscoelasticity on drop deformation in simple

shear and 5:1:5 planar contraction/expansion microchannel
Changkwon Chung a , Martien A. Hulsen b , Ju Min Kim c , Kyung Hyun Ahn a,∗ , Seung Jong Lee a
a
School of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Republic of Korea
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We implemented a finite element-front tracking method (FE-FTM) to understand the drop dynamics in
Received 6 March 2008 microfluidic applications. We investigated the effect of viscoelasticity of both drop and medium. The
Received in revised form 21 May 2008 Oldroyd-B model was used for viscoelastic fluid, and DEVSS-G/SUPG/matrix logarithm algorithms were
Accepted 4 June 2008
applied to improve numerical stability. We first verified the reliability of the algorithm by comparing with
previous results under simple shear flow. The results were in good agreement with previous reports in a
Keywords:
wide range of parameters such as capillary number (Ca) and Deborah number (De). Then we applied the
Drop deformation
algorithm to a 5:1:5 planar contraction – narrow channel – expansion flow which is typical microfluidic
Shear flow
Contraction/expansion flow
flows. One of the goal of this study is to explore the effect of viscoelasticity of drop and medium on
Finite element method drop deformation, and to propose the strategy to control the drop shape. When a Newtonian drop was
Front tracking method suspended in a viscoelastic medium, in the narrow channel region, we observed an ‘ellipsoid-like drop’ in
Oldroyd-B model contrast to a ‘bullet-like drop’ which is the typical shape for the case of a Newtonian drop in Newtonian
DEVSS-G medium. When a viscoelastic drop is suspended in Newtonian medium, the extent of ‘drop swell’ to the
SUPG cross-stream direction was enhanced at the exit of the narrow channel. We explained these phenomena in
Matrix logarithm terms of the normal stress difference developed in the viscoelastic fluid. The present study shows that the
viscoelasticity plays a significant role on drop dynamics and drop shape in particular. We expect this study
will be helpful to understand the drop dynamics in microchannel flow, and provide useful information in
manipulating drops in complicated geometries such as microfluidic channels.
© 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In these problems, drop dynamics is governed by diverse forces

Recently, microparticle fabrication attracts much attention due
to the increasing demand for potential applications such as drug
delivery [1], photonic crystal [2] and DNA multi-plexed analysis
[3]. Microfluidic channels have been extensively used due to their
inherent high-throughput way of operation [4,5]. In microparti-
cle fabrication, one important issue is to control the shape of the
microparticles, which is typically realized through two-phase fluid
systems [5–7] or continuous flow lithography [3,4,8]. Thus, it is
essential to understand drop dynamics in two-phase systems to
generate a targeted shape. In the conventional industries, drop
deformation problem is also quite important in polymer blends
[9–12] and polymer processing [13] to control the microstructure
and rheology and thus to enhance the product quality.
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 880 8322; fax: +82 2 880 1580.
E-mail address: ahnnet@snu.ac.kr (K.H. Ahn).
such as surface tension and viscous forces, and the rheology of the
fluid can be important when non-Newtonian fluids are involved.
Several phenomenological models [14–18] have been proposed to
explain drop dynamics in Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids which
show good agreement with experiments. However, these theories
are limited to small deformations in simple viscometric flows since
the drop shape is assumed to be ellipsoidal. Thus, there is a growing
demand for numerical analysis of drop deformation to gain phys-
ical insights for academic interest as well as practical purposes.
A number of numerical studies that focused on non-Newtonian
effects have been conducted for drop deformation in viscometric
flows, e.g., shear flow [19–25] and extensional flow [26–28]. Also,
non-Newtonian effects in complicated flow problems have been
investigated for various applications such as gas injection in a cap-
illary tube [29], bubble rising [30], pendant drop formation [31,32]
and drop deformation in contraction/expansion flows [33,34]. As
for drop deformation in contraction/expansion flows, only a few
numerical studies have been reported on axisymmetric drop defor-
mation in contraction/expansion flow [33,35] and on planar drop

0377-0257/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jnnfm.2008.06.002
 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93 81

Table 1
Previous works for viscoelastic effects on drop deformation in shear flow

Authors Algorithm Dimension VE model Fluids Ca De

Pillapakkam and Singh [25] Level-set 2D, 3D Oldroyd-B NV, VN 0.24 0.4
0.6 ∼8
60 8

Yue et al. [24] Diffuse interface 2D Oldroyd-B NV 0.24 0.4

Yue et al. [22] Diffuse interface 2D Oldroyd-B NV, VN 0.1, 0.2 ∼2

Yue et al. [23] Diffuse interface 2D Oldroyd-B NV 0.1 ∼10

VN 0.1 ∼2

Chinyoka et al. [21] Volume of fluid 2D Oldroyd-B NV, VN, VV 0.24, 0.6 0.4
NV, VN 60 ∼8

Khismatullin et al. [20] Volume of fluid 3D Oldroyd-B, Giesekus NV 0.24, 0.6 0.4
Aggarwal and Sarkar [41] Front tracking 3D Oldroyd-B VN ∼0.35 ∼3

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram for remeshing algorithm of front mesh: (a) element addition; (b) element deletion.

deformation in convergent–divergent flow [34,36]. Furthermore, We implemented a front tracking method [44] to deal with two-
these studies were limited to Newtonian fluids [35,36] or shear- phase flow problems for various applications. The advantage of a
thinning fluids modelled by the Carreau model [33], and the effect front tracking method is that it provides robust solutions since a
of viscoelasticity has rarely been reported. large number of front particles on the interface are advected, i.e.,
There are many studies on the effect of viscoelasticity on drop tracking interfaces into the subgrid level is available [43,45,46].
deformation in simple shear flow. Boger fluids have been consid- As a sharp interface method, the front tracking method is also
ered as a model fluid to investigate the effect of viscoelasticity applicable to viscoelastic fluid problems. A front tracking algorithm
in shear flow [37–40]. The elasticity of medium fluid helps to based on finite difference method (FD-FTM) has been presented
align a drop along the flow direction and to enhance deforma-
tion in shear flow, whereas the elasticity of a drop contributes
to resist drop deformation [38–40]. The adverse tendency of vis-
coelastic effects on drop dynamics was qualitatively reproduced in
two-dimensional simulations for small deformation (Ca = 0.1, 0.2)
[22] and for large deformation (Ca = 0.6) [21,25]. Recently, three-
dimensional numerical simulations were performed [20,41]. How-
ever, a discussion for accurate viscoelastic solutions is still under
way even in two-dimensional approaches [21–25]. Detailed infor-
mation for related works is presented in Table 1. Comparing our
solutions with previous works [21–25] is quite meaningful since
the problem is regarded as a good model problem to validate the
numerical algorithm. We also study drop deformation in 5:1:5 pla-
nar contraction/expansion flow which is frequently encountered in
microfluidics. Though numerous experimental studies have been
conducted on drop manipulation at small length scale [42,43], the
numerical study on the effect of viscoelaticity for drop dynamics
has rarely been presented. Here, we present how viscoelasticity of
the fluid affects drop dynamics in microchannel flows. Fig. 2. Definition of unit tangent vector and unit normal vector in front elements.
82 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the drop deformation under shear flow: (a) initial drop and computational domain; (b) characterization of deformed drop.

for two-dimensional drop deformation in periodic extensional flow
[28,47] and for three-dimensional viscoelastic drop deformation in
shear flow [41]. However, the finite difference based approaches
[28,41,44,47,48] are subjected to geometrically simple problems
with structured meshes. Here, we propose a finite element-front
tracking method (FE-FTM) to investigate the effect of viscoelas-
ticity on two-dimensional drop deformation. We believe that this
method is more adaptable to microfluidic applications since finite
element method has no geometrical constraints.
In the next section, we will explain details of the numerical
formulation of the FE-FTM algorithm. Then we apply the present
algorithm to drop deformation problems under simple shear flow
to validate the reliability of the algorithm for both Newtonian and
viscoelastic fluids. Then we investigate the drop dynamics in a 5:1:5

Fig. 4. Mesh configurations: (a) UM1; (b) UM2; (c) UM3; (d) UC2.
 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93 83

planar contraction/expansion flow to show possible applications the boundary is t = T·nd , where T = −pI + ␶ + s (u + (u)T ) and nd is
to microfluidics. We will investigate the effect of viscoelasticity an outward normal vector from the boundary in the computational
on drop dynamics. As for effect of fluid elasticity, we will discuss domain. With Eq. (4c), the momentum balance Eq. (4a) is stabilized
the role of the normal stress difference on drop deformation in by introducing an elliptic term [49].
microchannel flow, which would be useful in controlling the drop In this study, we employ the matrix logarithm scheme [51] to
shape using viscoelastic fluids in microfluidic applications. enhance numerical stability, such that the positive definiteness
of the conformation tensor C be preserved during computation.
2. Numerical method The conformation tensor can be diagonalized with the relation-
ship C = R·c·RT , where R is a matrix composed of the eigenvectors
2.1. Governing equations of C and the diagonal tensor c is constructed from the corre-
sponding eigenvalues [52,53]. We replace the C-based constitutive
We consider incompressible and immiscible two-phase fluid equation with the logarithm tensor based formulation. Thus, we
dim
flow. Inertia is assumed to be negligible. The Oldroyd-B model deal with the evolution equation of s = log c = log(ci )ni ni =
is adopted as a constitutive equation for the viscoelastic fluid. dim i=1
s n n , where s is the logarithm tensor in the principal frame.
i=1 i i i
Momentum, continuity and constitutive equations are denoted as
ci denotes the eigenvalue of the conformation tensor, si is the
follows:
eigenvalue of the logarithm tensor, ni is the principal direction con-
∇ p − s ∇ · (∇ u + (∇ u)T ) − ∇ · ␶ − nl ı(x − xp ) = 0, (1a) jugated with ci and dim is set to 2 as the dimension number. The
evolution equation makes the problem more stable by taking the
∇ · u = 0, (1b) logarithm in order to change the growth of the stress tensor form
∂C 1 exponetial to linear, where the exponential growth is regarded as
+ u · ∇ C − (∇ u)T · C − C · ∇ u = − (C − I), (1c) the source of the numerical breakdown. The time derivative of s for
∂t 
Oldroyd-B model can be written as follows [51]:
where p denotes the pressure, s the solvent viscosity, u the velocity
vector, ␶ the extra stress tensor, C the conformation tensor, t the dim 
  
dim 
dim
1 (ci − Iii ) si − sj
time,  the relaxation time of polymer and I the identity tensor, ṡ= 2Gii − ni ni + (cj Gij + ci Gji )ni nj ,
 ci ci − cj
respectively. In Eq. (1a), the last term −nl ı(x − xp ) corresponds i=1 i=1 j=1
to capillary force, where  is the surface tension coefficient,  twice i=/ j
the local mean curvature of the surface, nl an outward unit normal (5)
vector from the surface, and ı(x − xp ) the Dirac delta function which
is non-zero only at x = xp . Here, x is the position vector in the domain
and xp is the position vector to designate the interface location. The
relationship between the extra stress tensor ␶ and conformation
tensor C is given by
(1 − ˇ)
␶= (C − I), (2)

where I is the identity tensor. ˇ represents the solvent contribution
to solution viscosity  as follows:
s s
ˇ= = , (3)
p + s 
where p is the polymer contribution to the solution viscosity.

2.2. Numerical formulation

The finite element method is employed to discretize the govern-

ing equations Eqs. (1a)–(1c). The DEVSS-G scheme [49] and SUPG
scheme [50] are adopted as stabilization schemes. We reformulate
the momentum Eq. (1a), the continuity Eq. (1b) with the DEVSS-G
scheme [49] into following weak form:

−∇ ; pI + ∇ ; (∇ u + (∇ u)T ) − (1 − ˇ)(GT + G)

 
+∇ ; ␶ − { ; nl ı(x − xp )} − ¯ ;t = 0, (4a)

; ∇ · u = 0, (4b)

; G − (∇ u)T  = 0, (4c)

where  and are bilinear and biquadratic shape functions in two-

dimension, respectively.   and { } denote domain integral and line
integral along the finite element, and { }r means the line integral
along the interface, respectively. ¯ is a one-dimensional quadratic
shape function, G the velocity-gradient tensor. Variables such as
p, G and ␶ are approximated in terms of bilinear shape functions, Fig. 5. Steady drop deformation with increasing Ca. Viscosity of drop fluid is same
while u is discretized with biquadratic shape function. Traction on with the medium ( = 1). (a) Deformation parameter D; (b) orientation angle
.
84 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93

Fig. 6. Contour of extensional rate ε̇N based on drop orientation (UM3). ε̇N = m1 · GT · m1 , where m1 is the unit vector directing major principal direction of deformed drop.
(a) Ca = 0.1; (b) Ca = 0.3; (c) Ca = 0.5; (d) Ca = 1.0.

where Gii is the velocity-gradient tensor in the principal frame. Con- lowing some literatures [54–56], though it is usually assumed as 1
sequently, the equation described by the logarithm tensor S in the in other viscoelastic fluid studies [50,57]. It is generally conceded
global frame is obtained as follows: that proper value of ˛ is adopted depending on the problem since
somewhat large value may introduce a serious error [57]. Super-
∂S
+ u · ∇ S = Ṡ, (6) script n and n + 1 denote each time step. With the solution S of Eq.
∂t
(7), we need to transform it into the principal frame by s = RT ·S·R to
where Ṡ is the transformed tensor of ṡ through the matrix diago- get the conformation tensor C using C = R·c·RT = R·exps·RT . Finally,
nalization as Ṡ = R · ṡ · RT . Since C and S are coaxial, it is possible the extra stress tensor ␶ is calculated by Eq. (2). Then, the solu-
to build R using the eigenvectors of C. The discrete form of Eq. (6) tion vector [G, u, p]T can be obtained after solving the coupled Eqs.
with SUPG [50] scheme can be written as (4a)–(4c) at every time step.

Sn+1 − Sn n
 + s ; + un+1 · ∇ Sn+1 =  + s ; Ṡ , (7) 2.3. Front tracking method
t

where s is the element-wise upwinding shape function,
s = ˛(|uc ·hx | + |uc ·hy |)/(2uc ·uc ). uc denotes the velocity vector at
the center node of an element, hx and uy are the size vectors of the
element which are projected on x-axis and y-axis, respectively. In
this study, a streamline upwinding coefficient ˛ of 2 is used, fol-
Table 2
Detailed information of meshes used in this study
2.3.1. Temporal integration of interfaces
In the front tracking method, successive front elements com-
prise the interface as in Fig. 1(a), where each front element has two
front particles. The position of front particle, xp on the interface is
Table 3
Comparison of drop deformation at steady state (t = 3˙ −1 , Ca = 0.24, De = 0.4, ˇ = 0.5)
Our data (UC2 mesh) Chinyoka [68]

Name Elements Nodes DOF xmin /0.5lw D

D

UM1 2,300 9,333 49,437 0.1 NN 0.2674 28.90 0.2878 32.26

UM2 7,935 31,909 168,078 0.05 VN 0.2582 30.32 0.2799 32.53
UM3 26,868 107,689 566,079 0.025 NV 0.2550 25.38 0.2656 28.12
UC2 14,494 58,353 307,585 0.05 VV 0.2455 27.00 0.2598 28.22
 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93 85

Fig. 7. Steady drop deformation with increasing De (Ca = 0.1, ˇ = 0.5, UC2). N means
Newtonian fluid and V means viscoelastic fluid. The first character is drop fluid Fig. 9. Steady drop deformation with increasing De (Ca = 0.5, ˇ = 0.5, UC2).
and the latter one is medium fluid. (a) Deformation parameter D; (b) orientation
angle
.
where up is the particle velocity of the coordinate xp , which is
interpolated with a biquadratic shape function. New position of
convected with fluid velocity. The interface moves according to the
the particle xn+1
p is updated from the previous step xnp using the
following equation:
Runge-Kutta second-order method (RK2) as follows:
dxp
= up , (8) x̃p = tup (xnp , t), (9a)
dt

Fig. 8. Shear component of polymer conformation tensor C based on drop orientation (Dei = 0.5, ˇi = 0.5, Ca = 0.1, UC2). The shear component of C is represented as C = m1 ·C·m2 ,
where m1 and m2 are the unit vectors directing major and minor principal directions of deformed drop. (a) NV; (b) VN.
86 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93

x̂p = tup (xnp + 0.5x̃p , t), (9b) nc is the outward unit normal vector at the center of a front ele-
ment as designated in Fig. 2. In this case, the immersed boundary
xn+1
p = xnp + x̂p , (9c) method [58] is also used to calculate N in the finite element mesh.
where x̃p and x̂p denote the intermediate position vectors of front xc is the position of the center of a front element. In the present
particles. study, fluid viscosity (), relaxation time of polymer () and solvent
contribution to solution viscosity (ˇ) are interpolated as follows:
2.3.2. Remeshing of front mesh
The distances between two successive front nodes are initially (x) = m + (d − m )H(x), (15a)
set to a single uniform value. However, these distances may become
nonuniform as the front moves along the flow field. Thus, we need (x) = m + (d − m )H(x), (15b)
to keep the distance in a proper range to conserve the accuracy
of interface tracking during calculation. In this study, we conduct
front element addition/deletion as shown in Fig. 1 to keep the size ˇ(x) = ˇm + (ˇd − ˇm )H(x), (15c)
of front element, sl in the range of 20–50% with respect to h, that
is the diagonal size of the smallest mesh in the domain. If a front where the subscript d and m denote drop and medium, respectively.
element longer than 0.5h is detected as in Fig. 1(a), the element is
divided into two equally sized elements by inserting a new front
particle. If a front element shorter than 0.2h is detected, two neigh-
boring elements are connected at the center of the element after
the element is removed as in Fig. 1(b).

2.3.3. Treatment of surface tension

Surface tension is treated as a force term nl ı(x − xp ) in Eq.
4(a). The surface tension at finite element node, Fi is computed
using the force at a front element l, fl , with the immersed boundary
method [58]:

Fi (x) = fl (xp )ı2h (x − xp ). (10)
l

In the two-dimensional case, the smoothed delta function ı2h with

a range of two times mesh size h is approximated as follows:

ı2h (x − xp ) = d2h (x − xp )d2h (y − yp ), (11)

where d2h (r) is defined as follows [59]:

1 + cos(r/2h)
|r| ≤ 2h
d2h (r) = 4h . (12)
0 |r| > 2h

Surface tension at a front element fl is calculated based on the

interface topology. Here, we calculate the surface tension using
the curvature of front elements directly [46] instead of polynomial
fitting of interfaces [44,48]. Surface tension fl is calculated using
Frenet-Serret theorem [60] at xp as follows:
   pb
dtl
fl = nl ı ds =  ı ds = dtl = (tlpb − tlpa ), (13)
ds ds
ds pa

where  denotes the surface tension coefficient, ı is the Dirac delta

function which has non-zero only at the interface and ds is the
length of a front element. tl is a unit tangent vector at front par-
ticles pa and pb of the front element l as shown in Fig. 2. This
front element-wise integration results in inward force at the front
particles as shown in Fig. 2.
In this study, we consider two-phase system of purely immis-
cible fluids. However, we deal with this system in a way that the
material properties continuously change across the interface. We
utilize the Heaviside function H(x) to interpolate material prop-
erties of two-phase fluids. The Heaviside function is computed by
solving a Poisson equation with essential boundary condition and
a simple filtering algorithm [48]:

∇ 2 H(x) = ∇ · N = ∇ · nc ı2h (x − xc )ds, (14)
ds

where N is the outward unit normal vector in the finite element

mesh, which is distributed from the front mesh (interfaces) and Fig. 10. Schematic diagram of drop deformation in contraction/expansion flow.
 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Drop deformation in simple shear flow
3.1.1. Problem description
We first consider drop deformation under simple shear flow to
verify our finite element-front tracking algorithm and to gain phys-
ical insights on drop dynamics. The drop with the radius a is initially
positioned at the center of the simulation domain. We assume that
two side walls move in reverse directions with a constant velocity,
which results in a constant shear rate .
˙ The computational domain
has a width of lw and a length of 24a, as shown in Fig. 3(a). In this
study, four different cases are considered: Newtonian drop in New-
tonian medium (NN), Newtonian drop in viscoelastic medium (NV),
viscoelastic drop in Newtonian medium (VN) and viscoelastic drop
in viscoelastic medium (VV). The drop deformation parameter D is
defined as D = (L − B)/L + B as shown in Fig. 3(b), where L and B are
the length along two principal directions m1 , m2 of the deformed
drop, respectively. We define L and B as the longest and the short-
est distance from the drop center to the interface. The orientation
angle
is defined as an included angle between the principal axis
of the deformed drop (m1 ) and the flow direction as shown in
Fig. 3(b).
Fig. 11. Mesh configurations (25,010 elements, 101,005 nodes,
xmin /w = 0.05): (a) whole domain; (b) zoomed view of contraction region.
87
3.1.2. Parameters
The system is governed by the following dimensionless num-
bers: capillary number (Ca), Deborah number (De) and viscosity
ratio of drop to medium ( ) defined as follows:
m a
˙
Ca = , (16)

Dei = i ,
˙ (17)
d
= , (18)
m
where Dei is defined for drop and medium (i = d, m), respectively.
In our simulation, drop and medium are assumed to have the same
viscosity, i.e., = 1 for convenience, and the relaxation times of drop
and medium for the VV system are assumed to be the same. Mesh
configurations are shown in Fig. 4 with wall confinement ratio
(a/lw ) of 0.25. We refined the center region with structured ele-
ments to more accurately resolve the drop deformation. Detailed
information of each mesh is given in Table 2.
3.1.3. Code verification for NN
3.1.3.1. Effect of wall confinement. The drop deformation is known
to increase as wall confinement ratio (a/lw ) increases [61–63]. In
88 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93

this section, we investigated how the wall confinement affects drop medium are viscoelastic. Later, Yue et al. [24] considered the same
deformation in two-dimensional flow as a preliminary study. With problem using the diffuse-interface method and showed a D value
an additional mesh, we confirmed that the drop deformation shows similar to Pillapakkam and Singh [25]. Recently, Chinyoka et al. [21]
a very weak dependency on the wall confinement: e.g., 6.1% of D revisited the same problem using the volume of fluid method and
deviation for Ca = 0.1 between a/lw = 0.25 and a/lw = 0.125, and 7.9% obtained D = 0.26. In the present study, the UC2 mesh (Fig. 4(d))
of D deviation for Ca = 0.5. In this study, we set a/lw as 0.25 to com- was used to compare steady D values for Ca = 0.24 and De = 0.4.
pare our solutions with previous studies [21,24,64], following the The number of degrees of freedom (DOF) is provided in Table 2.
convention that the wall confinement effect can be neglected for Periodic boundary conditions for u, G and S were imposed, connect-
a/lw = 0.25 so that the drops do not interact with the wall [21]. ing the inflow and outflow boundary. With the above conditions,
our result is similar to that of Chinyoka et al. [68]. Other solu-
3.1.3.2. Effect of Ca. We first investigated the drop deformation tions for NN, NV and VN cases are also compared with Ref. [68]
problem for the NN system with unstructured meshes UM1, UM2 in Table 3.
and UM3. A fully developed velocity profile was imposed at the
inlet. The results for D and
at steady state are presented in Fig. 5. 3.1.4.2. Effect of viscoelasticity (Ca = 0.1 and Ca = 0.5). In order to
As Ca increases, D increases and
decreases, i.e., the drop is more investigate the effect of fluid elasticity on drop deformation,
aligned with the flow direction. In Fig. 5(a), our results are con- the simulations were conducted at Ca = 0.1 with the UC2 mesh
sistent with previous reports [19,21,24,64] in a wide range of Ca. (Fig. 4(d)). Calculated D values for NV and VN agree with Yue et al.
Hence, it can be concluded that the present FE-FTM is reliable. For [22] as shown in Fig. 7(a). For instance, D was 0.122 (NV) and 0.103
small deformation, Ca ≤ 0.3 in Fig. 5(b),
coincides with the pre- (VN) for Dei = 2 in Ref. [22], while it was 0.122 (NV) and 0.109 (VN),
diction from the perturbation theory [65,66]. Though the theory is respectively in our simulation. Comparing NV with VN in Fig. 7,
based on three-dimensional drop deformation, it coincides with an increase of medium elasticity (Dem ) results in an increase of D
the present and existing results, which implies that the viscous and decrease of
. Comparing VV with NV, D was predicted some-
stress to the vorticity direction gives little effect on the orienta- what lower than NV at all De, while
was almost constant, which
tion angle. In the previous study [64], the drop did not show the implies that the medium elasticity plays a dominant role in drop
steady-state shape over critical Ca (Cac ) ∼ 0.875, i.e., the drop was orientation and the drop elasticity tends to resist drop deformation
continuously extended for Ca > Cac . However, in our simulations, at small Ca.
the steady-state shape is maintained up to Ca ∼1. Major differences In order to understand the drop dynamics in shear flow more
between the study in Ref. [64] and the present study are the size quantitatively, the extensional component of the conformation ten-
of the computational domain and the inlet boundary condition. In sor was separated from drop orientation through εC = m1 ·C·m1 . We
Ref. [64], the domain was smaller and periodic boundary conditions
were imposed, therefore, closely packed drops were considered,
while a steady velocity profile was imposed in the present study,
i.e., we investigate single drop dynamics excluding drop–drop inter-
action. In addition, it is noteworthy that there were no differences
between fully developed condition and periodic condition, which
implies that our domain is large enough along the streamwise direc-
tion.
To understand the kinematic characteristics of the sheared drop,
we decoupled the extensional and rotational component of the
velocity-gradient tensor since shear flow is kinematically a mix-
ture of stretching and rotation [67]. Following Yue et al. [22], the
extensional rate ε̇N was estimated as ε̇N = m1 · GT · m1 , where G
is the velocity-gradient tensor and m1 is the unit vector in the
major principal direction as shown in Fig. 3(b). The drop shape
is related to the extensional rate ε̇N since the extensional stress
exerted in the orientation direction is considered as a primary
factor on drop deformation. The contours of the extensional rate
are shown for various Ca in Fig. 6. For weakly deformed drops
(Ca = 0.1–0.5; Fig. 6(a)–(c)), a compressive rate (equivalent to nega-
tive ε̇N ) is observed inside the drop, while a high extensional rate is
found near the tip; therefore the ellipsoidal shape is developed at
moderate Ca. For a highly extended drop (Ca = 1; Fig. 6(d)), a com-
pressive rate is seen at both ends inside the drop, and an extensional
rate is observed in the drop center for Ca = 1, i.e., the extensional
stress at the center tends to separate the drop in two drops, and the
compressive stress at both ends tends to develop bulbous shapes.
Therefore, we can conclude that the drop shape is determined by
the distribution of the extensional stress.

3.1.4. Code verification for effect of viscoelasticity

3.1.4.1. Effect of viscoelasticity (Ca = 0.24). The effect of viscoelas-
ticity on drop deformation was first studied with numerical
simulation by Pillapakkam and Singh [25] using the level-set
method. They employed the Oldroyd-B model with ˇ = 0.5 and Fig. 12. Drop deformation along the position of moving drop ( = 100, Ca = 0.01,
obtained D = 0.48 for Ca = 0.24 and De = 0.4 when both drop and d = 50): (a) drop shapes and D; (b) drop size (L, B).
 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93 89

also separated the shear component of the conformation tensor
from
through C = m1 ·C·m2 , where m2 is the unit vector towards
as De increases, which is qualitatively in
the minor principal direction of the deformed drop as in Fig. 3(b).
C is closely related to the drop orientation. For instance, a positive
shear stress in the upward flow region means the stress towards
right (positive x-direction), while a negative shear stress in the
upward flow region means the stress towards left (negative x-
direction). With these concepts, we denote the direction of the
stress with respect to the flow direction as an arrow in Fig. 8. For the
NV case as in Fig. 8(a), the contribution of C near the drop makes
the drop align to the shear flow, i.e.,
decreases. On the contrary, contraction/expansion channel is presented in Fig. 10. The width of
for VN case as in Fig. 8(b), the stress exerts to the opposite direction
(denoted as white arrows) against the flow direction since the fluid
inside the drop flows clockwise. Therefore, the medium elasticity
plays a role to rotate the drop more to the flow direction, whereas
the drop elasticity resists the orientation to the flow direction. For
NN case, it was found that the viscous shear stress of both drop and
medium tended to reduce the orientation angle
, and consequently enough compared to the drop size. Initially a drop with the diameter
Ca = 0.5 and Ca = 0.1 is the VN case, i.e., slight decrease of D and
slight increase of
agreement with Ref. [25] for Ca = 0.6 even though Ca is not the
same.
3.2. Drop deformation in 5:1:5 planar contraction/expansion flow
3.2.1. Problem description
Here, we consider drop deformation in contraction/expansion
flow as a typical microfluidic problem. Schematic diagram for 5:1:5
the narrow channel is w, and the radius of curvature at the contrac-
tion/expansion corner was set as r = w/2. There are two reasons for
rounding the corner: first to prevent the interface from going out
of the corner during temporal integration of the interface and sec-
ond to avoid the ambiguity due to stress singularity at the abrupt
corner. The length of the narrow and expansion channel was long

decreases as Ca increases as in Fig. 5(b). d was positioned at the center of the upstream region, namely 5w
In case of Ca = 0.5 (Fig. 9), a different pattern of D and
was upward from the entrance of the narrow channel. Fully developed
observed compared to Ca = 0.1 (Fig. 7). For all cases (NV, VN, VV), profiles of velocity and extra stress were imposed at the inlet and
D was less than that of NN case. The only similarity between outlet.

Fig. 13. Drop shapes in the entrance and exit region depending on drop size ( = 100, Ca = 0.01). (a) d = 50, yd /w = 3.50, 5.15, 7.08, (b) d = 60, yd /w = 2.73, 4.85, 7.30, (c) d = 70,
yd /w = 2.45, 5.10, 8.15, (d) d = 50, yd /w = 13.71, 15.47, 17.14, (e) d = 60, yd /w = 13.33, 15.57, 17.40, (f) d = 70, yd /w = 12.77, 15.60, 17.73.
90 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93

3.2.2. Parameters
In this problem, we defined the dimensionless numbers with
the characteristic variables in the narrow channel as follows:
m V̄
Ca = , (19)

V̄
Dei = i , (20)
w/2
d
= , (21)
m
where m denotes the medium viscosity,  the surface tension coef-
ficient, i the relaxation time of viscoelastic fluid i (i = d, m) and V̄ the
mean velocity of the fluid in the narrow channel. Here, the viscosity
ratio of drop to medium was set as = 100 to consider the dynam-
ics of more viscous drops [5]. The mesh configuration is provided
in Fig. 11. Center regions in the upstream and downstream and the
narrow channel were refined with structured elements, where the
characteristic mesh size was set xmin /w = 0.05 to resolve drop
dynamics as accurately as possible with affordable computation
time. The mesh was composed of 25,010 elements with 101,005
nodes.
In this study, we re-defined the smoothed delta function ıh (x −
xp ) in place of Eq. (12) to treat the surface tension using the
immersed boundary method [58]:

ıh (x − xp ) = dh (x − xp )dh (y − yp )

1
 |x − xp |
 |y − yp |

= 1− 1− (22)
h2 h h
where h =
xmin =
ymin . In this application, we should consider
the case that the drop interface exists near the wall within a mesh
size, especially in the narrow channel. In order to calculate the sur-
face tension along the wall where the normal direction to the wall

is the x-direction, a half-ranged delta function dh/2 (x − xp ) should
Fig. 14. Effect of fluid elasticity on deformation parameter along the position of
be substituted for dh (x − xp ) in Eq. (22) to avoid a loss of surface moving drop ( = 100, Ca = 0.01, ˇ = 0.5, d = 50): (a) effect of drop elasticity (VN); (b)
tension transferred out of the domain [69], i.e., using dh/2 (x − xp ) effect of medium elasticity (NV).
means that the smoothed region becomes half in the x-direction
and the weighting factor is doubled in the region. For the same
reason, we also applied a modified smoothed delta function as error. We observed a 2.5% reduction of the radius at the final state
ıh/2 (x − xp ) = dh/2
 
(x − xp )dh/2 (y − yp ) along the rounded wall at in Fig. 12(b). It was confirmed that this error reduces with mesh
both the contraction and expansion region. refinement.
The shapes of larger drops of d = 50, 60, 70 are presented in
3.2.3. Newtonian drop/Newtonian medium (NN) Fig. 13 to investigate the effect of drop size. Drop deformation
We investigated the dynamics of a viscous drop ( = 100) for seems to be insignificant at the entrance region and in the nar-
Ca = 0.01 to reproduce the experimental conditions as far as pos- row channel, i.e., the ‘oblong shape’ is commonly observed due to
sible [5]. Drop shape and deformation parameter D are presented the geometric constraint as in Fig. 13(a)–(c). A slight alleviation of
in Fig. 12(a) for the drop with d = 50, which is larger than the nar- drop swell is observed at exit region as d increases as evidenced
row channel width (w = 40). Dimensionless position of the moving
drop, yd /w is designated on the x-coordinate in the graph, where
the region of the narrow channel corresponds to from 5 to 15.
The position of the drop is the mean value of both leading and
trailing meniscus ends. The drop exhibits an ‘oblong shape’ at the
contraction region and a ‘bullet shape’ in the narrow channel at
steady state. The drop is swelled in the cross-stream direction (x-
direction in Fig. 10) just after a drop escapes from the exit region,
where D is negative since L < B. Surface tension tends to relax the
deformed drop back to the initial shape of the circle at the expanded
channel. In Fig. 12(b), L exhibits an overshoot at the contraction
region where the extensional rate shows a sharp peak along the
center line, whereas B is maintained as a constant due to the
confinement effect by channel walls. At the exit region, a reverse
phenomenon is observed such that B is larger than L, which shows
the ‘drop swell’ to the cross-stream direction. It is to be noted
that L and B decrease below the initial length due to numerical
 It might originate from a slight difference of cap-
in Fig. 13(d)–(f).
illary force ( ds nı ds) since a larger drop at exit region shows a
relatively smaller interface curvature of the trailing meniscus.
3.2.4. Effect of viscoelasticity
The drop deformation parameter was also studied for a vis-
coelastic drop in a Newtonian medium (VN) and for a Newtonian
drop in a viscoelastic medium (NV) as in Fig. 14. Increase of D in
the narrow channel is clearly observed as the elasticity of medium
(Dem ) increases in Fig. 14(b), whereas the effect of drop elastic-
ity (Ded ) is relatively small on drop deformation in Fig. 14(a). D
increases at lower Dem = 0.2 and 0.4, and the drop swells to the
cross-stream direction at the exit region (at around 15 on the x-
coordinate in Fig. 14(a)). For the VN case, the drop-swell is clearly
observed and the recovery process to the initial shape is faster than
for the Newtonian drop, while the drop-swell is remarkably alle-
viated for the NV case. The drop shape and velocity vectors in the
 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93 91

Fig. 15. Drop shape with velocity vectors in the narrow channel: (a) NN, ıf /0.5w = 0.103; (b) VN (Ded = 2), ıf /0.5w = 0.113; (c) NV (Dem = 0.4), ıf /0.5w = 0.186.

narrow channel are provided in Fig. 15. For the NV case, the drop
shows an ‘ellipsoid-like shape’ with symmetric curvatures of lead-
ing and trailing menisci as shown in Fig. 15(c) which leads to a
D increase, whereas a ‘bullet shape’ with a relatively flat trailing
meniscus is developed for the NN and VN cases. It was reported
that there is a film of liquid of uniform thickness between drop
interface and tube wall, which is in a region of uniform pressure
with no tangential stress on the interface [70]. Here, we estimated
the dimensionless film thickness between drop interface and chan-
nel wall as ıf /0.5w = 0.103 (NN), 0.113 (VN), 0.186 (NV), where

Fig. 16. Contour of normal stress difference near drop in the narrow channel ( = 100, Ca = 0.01, ˇ = 0.5, d = 50). (a)  yy −  xx (VN, Ded = 2); (b)  yy −  xx (NV, Dem = 0.4).
92 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93
the thickest one is the NV case. To understand the differences in
drop shape and film thickness, we investigated the contours of
normal stress difference for the VN and NV cases in Fig. 16. For
VN in Fig. 16(a), the normal stress difference develops inside the
drop near the wall, which is considered to help drop swell to the
cross-stream direction at the exit region since the normal stress
difference is exerting to the wall direction during the confinement
in the narrow channel. For the NV case, the normal stress differ-
ence is highly developed in the film region in Fig. 16(b), which is
regarded as a primary factor for the increase of drop deformation
in the narrow channel and for alleviation of drop swell at the exit
region. Therefore, it might be concluded that the normal stress dif-
ference strongly affects drop dynamics including drop shape, film
thickness in the narrow channel and drop swell at the exit region.
4. Concluding remarks
In this paper, we investigate viscoelastic effects on drop dynam-
ics utilizing a finite element-front tracking method (FE-FTM) with
stabilizing schemes as DEVSS-G/SUPG/ML. First, drop deformation
in shear flow is considered. We compare our steady solutions with
previous results [19,21,24,64–66] for Newtonian system (NN) to
verify our algorithm, where we present steady solutions up to
Ca = 1. We also validate our viscoelastic solutions in comparison
with previous results [22,25,68]. We explain drop dynamics with
extensional components of Newtonian viscous fluid (ε̇N ) and of
polymer conformation tensor (εC ), and shear component of poly-
mer conformation tensor (C ) based on drop orientation. Since the
shear component is considered to relate to the drop rotation, a vis-
coelastic medium tends to rotate a drop to the flow direction, while
a viscoelastic drop tends to resist the rotation to the shear flow.
We also treat drop deformation in 5:1:5 planar contrac-
tion/expansion flow which is a typically confronted problem in
microfluidics. We confirm that FE-FTM describes physical phenom-
ena qualitatively by presenting the effect of initial drop size in a
Newtonian system ( = 100, Ca = 0.01). In the NN and VN cases, the
drop shows two distinctive features: a ‘bullet shape’ in the nar-
row channel and a ‘drop swell’ to the cross-stream direction at
the exit region. Especially, for the VN case, the normal stress dif-
ference developed inside the drop contributes to the drop swell
at the exit region. Meanwhile, in the NV case, the drop is more
deformed by the normal stress difference of the medium in the
narrow channel. Normal stress differences developed in the film
region between drop interface and channel wall seems to make a
drop into an ‘ellipsoid-like shape’ instead of a ‘bullet shape’, which
induces D enhancement in the narrow channel. Alleviation of the
drop swell to the cross-stream direction at the exit region is also
attributed to the normal stress difference of the medium. These
results tell us that viscoelastic fluids can be useful to control shapes
of microparticles in microfluidics.
It is expected that knowledge as stated above on the drop
dynamics in shear flow or in mixed flow would be helpful to
manipulate drops in microfluidics. In both cases, the normal stress
difference near the drop plays a significant role for drop shapes
and deformation. We infer that viscoelastic drop is unlikely to be
deformed easily while viscoelastic medium enhances drop defor-
mation since drop is more deformed in the NV case than the VN
case. We hope that this study would give physical insights to control
the drop shapes for various applications.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation
Grant funded by the Korean Government (MOEHRD) (KRF-2005-
213-D00033). The authors wish to acknowledge the National
Research Laboratory Fund (M10300000159) of the Ministry of
Science and Technology in Korea. The authors would like to
acknowledge the support from KISTI Supercomputing Center (KSC-
2007-S00-1021).
References
[1] J.A. Champion, Y.K. Katare, S. Mitragotri, Particle shape: a new design parameter
for micro- and nanoscale drug delivery carriers, J. Control. Release 121 (2007)
3–9.
[2] M. Seo, Z.H. Nie, S.Q. Xu, P.C. Lewis, E. Kumacheva, Microfluidics: from
dynamic lattices to periodic arrays of polymer disks, Langmuir 21 (2005)
4773–4775.
[3] D.C. Pregibon, M. Toner, P.S. Doyle, Multifunctional encoded particles for high-
throughput biomolecule analysis, Science 315 (2007) 1393–1396.
[4] D. Dendukuri, D.C. Pregibon, J. Collins, T.A. Hatton, P.S. Doyle, Continuous-flow
lithography for high-throughput microparticle synthesis, Nat. Mater. 5 (2006)
365–369.
[5] D. Dendukuri, K. Tsoi, T.A. Hatton, P.S. Doyle, Controlled synthesis of nonspher-
ical microparticles using microfluidics, Langmuir 21 (2005) 2113–2116.
[6] J. Collins, A.P. Lee, Control of serial microfluidic droplet size gradient by step-
wise ramping of flow rates, Microfluid Nanofluid 3 (2007) 19–25.
[7] Y.C. Tan, V. Cristini, A.P. Lee, Monodispersed microfluidic droplet genera-
tion by shear focusing microfluidic device, Sens. Actuators B 114 (2006)
350–356.
[8] Y.K. Cheung, B.M. Gillette, M. Zhong, S. Ramcharan, S.K. Sia, Direct patterning
of composite biocompatible microstructures using microfluidics, Lab Chip 7
(2007) 574–579.
[9] L.A. Utracki, Polymer Alloys and Blends, Hanser, Munich, 1989.
[10] H.A. Stone, Dynamics of drop deformation and breakup in viscous fluids, Ann.
Rev. Fluid Mech. 26 (1994) 65–102.
[11] J.M. Rallison, The deformation of small viscous drops and bubbles in shear flows,
Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 16 (1984) 45–66.
[12] J.S. Hong, K.H. Ahn, S.J. Lee, Strain hardening behavior of polymer blends with
fibril morphology, Rheol. Acta 45 (2005) 202–208.
[13] C.D. Han, Multiphase Flow in Polymer Processing, Academic press, New York,
1981.
[14] K. Verhulst, P. Moldenaers, M. Minale, Drop shape dynamics of a Newtonian
drop in a non-Newtonian matrix during transient and steady shear flow, J.
Rheol. 51 (2007) 261–273.
[15] W. Yu, C.X. Zhou, M. Bousmina, Theory of morphology evolution in mixtures of
viscoelastic immiscible components, J. Rheol. 49 (2005) 215–236.
[16] M. Minale, Deformation of a non-Newtonian ellipsoidal drop in a non-
Newtonian matrix: extension of Maffettone-Minale model, J. Non-Newton.
Fluid Mech. 123 (2004) 151–160.
[17] P.L. Maffettone, F. Greco, Ellipsoidal drop model for single drop dynamics with
non-Newtonian fluids, J. Rheol. 48 (2004) 83–100.
[18] F. Greco, Drop deformation for non-Newtonian fluids in slow flows, J. Non-
Newton. Fluid Mech. 107 (2002) 111–131.
[19] G.I. Taylor, The formation of emulsions in definable fields of flow, Proc. R. Soc.
Lond. Ser. A 146 (1934) 501–523.
[20] D. Khismatullin, Y. Renardy, M. Renardy, Development and implementation of
VOF-PROST for 3D viscoelastic liquid–liquid simulations, J. Non-Newton. Fluid
Mech. 140 (2006) 120–131.
[21] T. Chinyoka, Y.Y. Renardy, A. Renardy, D.B. Khismatullin, Two-dimensional study
of drop deformation under simple shear for Oldroyd-B liquids, J. Non-Newton.
Fluid Mech. 130 (2005) 45–56.
[22] P.T. Yue, J.J. Feng, C. Liu, J. Shen, Viscoelastic effects on drop deformation in
steady shear, J. Fluid Mech. 540 (2005) 427–437.
[23] P. Yue, J.J. Feng, C. Liu, J. Shen, Transient drop deformation upon startup of shear
in viscoelastic fluids, Phys. Fluids 17 (2005) 1231011–1231016.
[24] P.T. Yue, J.J. Feng, C. Liu, J. Shen, A diffuse-interface method for simulating two-
phase flows of complex fluids, J. Fluid Mech. 515 (2004) 293–317.
[25] S.B. Pillapakkam, P. Singh, A level-set method for computing solutions to vis-
coelastic two-phase flow, J. Comput. Phys. 174 (2001) 552–578.
[26] R.W. Hooper, V.F. de Almeida, C.W. Macosko, J.J. Derby, Transient polymeric
drop extension and retraction in uniaxial extensional flows, J. Non-Newton.
Fluid Mech. 98 (2001) 141–168.
[27] R. Hooper, M. Toose, C.W. Macosko, J.J. Derby, A comparison of boundary ele-
ment and finite element methods for modeling axisymmetric polymeric drop
deformation, Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 37 (2001) 837–864.
[28] K. Sarkar, W.R. Schowalter, Deformation of a two-dimensional viscoelastic
drop at non-zero Reynolds number in time-periodic extensional flows, J. Non-
Newton. Fluid Mech. 95 (2000) 315–342.
[29] D.A. de Sousa, E.J. Soares, R.S. de Queiroz, R.L. Thompson, Numerical investiga-
tion on gas-displacement of a shear-thinning liquid and a visco-plastic material
in capillary tubes, J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 144 (2007) 149–159.
[30] C. Malaga, J.M. Rallison, A rising bubble in a polymer solution, J. Non-Newton.
Fluid Mech. 141 (2007) 59–78.
[31] M.R. Davidson, J.J. Cooper-White, Pendant drop formation of shear-thinning
and yield stress fluids, Appl. Math. Model. 30 (2006) 1392–1405.
[32] M.R. Davidson, D.J.E. Harvie, J.J. Cooper-White, Simulations of pendant drop
formation of a viscoelastic liquid, Korea-Aust. Rheol. J. 18 (2006) 41–49.
 C. Chung et al. / J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 155 (2008) 80–93
[33] D.J.E. Harvie, M.R. Davidson, J.J. Cooper-White, M. Rudman, A parametric study
of droplet deformation through a microfluidic contraction: shear thinning liq-
uids, Int. J. Multiphase Flow 33 (2007) 545–556.
[34] R.E. Khayat, A. Luciani, L.A. Utracki, F. Godbille, J. Picot, Influence of shear and
elongation on drop deformation in convergent–divergent flows, Int. J. Multi-
phase Flow 26 (2000) 17–44.
[35] D.J.E. Harvie, M.R. Davidson, J.J. Cooper-White, M. Rudman, A parametric study
of droplet deformation through a microfluidic contraction: low viscosity New-
tonian droplets, Chem. Eng. Sci. 61 (2006) 5149–5158.
[36] R.E. Khayat, A. Luciani, L.A. Utracki, Boundary-element analysis of planar drop
deformation in confined flow. Part 1. Newtonian fluids, Eng. Anal. Bound. Elem.
19 (1997) 279–289.
[37] P.L. Maffettone, F. Greco, M. Simeone, S. Guido, Analysis of start-up dynamics
of a single drop through an ellipsoidal drop model for non-Newtonian fluids, J.
Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 126 (2005) 145–151.
[38] S. Guido, M. Simeone, F. Greco, Deformation of a Newtonian drop in a vis-
coelastic matrix under steady shear flow—experimental validation of slow flow
theory, J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 114 (2003) 65–82.
[39] W. Lerdwijitjarud, R.G. Larson, A. Sirivat, M.J. Solomon, Influence of weak
elasticity of dispersed phase on droplet behavior in sheared polybutadi-
ene/poly(dimethyl siloxane) blends, J. Rheol. 47 (2003) 37–58.
[40] F. Mighri, P.J. Carreau, A. Ajji, Influence of elastic properties on drop deformation
and breakup in shear flow, J. Rheol. 42 (1998) 1477–1490.
[41] N. Aggarwal, K. Sarkar, Deformation and breakup of a viscoelastic drop in a
Newtonian matrix under steady shear, J. Fluid Mech. 584 (2007) 1–21.
[42] T.M. Squires, S.R. Quake, Microfluidics: fluid physics at the nanoliter scale, Rev.
Mod. Phys. 77 (2005) 977–1026.
[43] V. Cristini, Y.C. Tan, Theory and numerical simulation of droplet dynamics in
complex flows—a review, Lab Chip 4 (2004) 257–264.
[44] S.O. Unverdi, G. Tryggvason, A front-tracking method for viscous, incompress-
ible, multi-fluid flows, J. Comput. Phys. 100 (1992) 25–37.
[45] J.A. Sethian, P. Smereka, Level set methods for fluid interfaces, Annu. Rev. Fluid
Mech. 35 (2003) 341–372.
[46] S. Shin, D. Juric, Modeling three-dimensional multiphase flow using a level con-
tour reconstruction method for front tracking without connectivity, J. Comput.
Phys. 180 (2002) 427–470.
[47] K. Sarkar, W.R. Schowalter, Deformation of a two-dimensional drop at non-zero
Reynolds number in time-periodic extensional flows: numerical simulation, J.
Fluid Mech. 436 (2001) 177–206.
[48] G. Tryggvason, B. Bunner, A. Esmaeeli, D. Juric, N. Al-Rawahi, W. Tauber, J. Han, S.
Nas, Y.J. Jan, A front-tracking method for the computations of multiphase flow,
J. Comput. Phys. 169 (2001) 708–759.
[49] A.W. Liu, D.E. Bornside, R.C. Armstrong, R.A. Brown, Viscoelastic flow of polymer
solutions around a periodic, linear array of cylinders: comparisons of predic-
tions for microstructure and flow fields, J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 77 (1998)
153–190.
[50] A.N. Brooks, T.J.R. Hughes, Streamline upwind Petrov-Galerkin formulations
for convection dominated flows with particular emphasis on the incom-
93
pressible Navier-Stokes equations, Comput. Meth. Appl. Mech. Eng. 32 (1982)
199–259.
[51] M.A. Hulsen, R. Fattal, R. Kupferman, Flow of viscoelastic fluids past a cylinder
at high Weissenberg number: stabilized simulations using matrix logarithms,
J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 127 (2005) 27–39.
[52] R. Fattal, R. Kupferman, Time-dependent simulation of viscoelastic flows at
high Weissenberg number using the log-conformation representation, J. Non-
Newton. Fluid Mech. 126 (2005) 23–37.
[53] R. Fattal, R. Kupferman, Constitutive laws for the matrix-logarithm of the con-
formation tensor, J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 123 (2004) 281–285.
[54] J. Ramirez, M. Laso, Size reduction methods for the implicit time-dependent
simulation of micro–macro viscoelastic flow problems, J. Non-Newton. Fluid
Mech. 127 (2005) 41–49.
[55] J.M. Kim, C. Kim, K.H. Ahn, S.J. Lee, An efficient iterative solver and high-
resolution computations of the Oldroyd-B fluid flow past a confined cylinder,
J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 123 (2004) 161–173.
[56] F.P.T. Baaijens, Mixed finite element methods for viscoelastic flow analysis: a
review, J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 79 (1998) 361–385.
[57] G.C. Georgiou, M.J. Crochet, The simultaneous use of 4 × 4 and 2 × 2 bilinear
stress elements for viscoelastic flows, Comput. Mech. 11 (1993) 341–354.
[58] R. Mittal, G. Iaccarino, Immersed boundary methods, Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 37
(2005) 239–261.
[59] C.S. Peskin, Numerical-analysis of blood-flow in heart, J. Comput. Phys. 25
(1977) 220–252.
[60] R.S. Millman, G.D. Parker, Loval Curve Theory, Elements of Differential Geome-
try, Prentice-Hall, 1977, pp. 13–48, Chapter 2.
[61] A. Vananroye, P.J.A. Janssen, P.D. Anderson, P. Van Puyvelde, P. Moldenaers,
Microconfined equiviscous droplet deformation: comparison of experimental
and numerical results, Phys. Fluids. 20 (2008) 013101-1-013101-10.
[62] P.J.A. Janssen, P.D. Anderson, Boundary-integral method for drop deformation
between parallel plates, Phys. Fluids. 19 (2007) 043602-1-043602-11.
[63] V. Sibillo, G. Pasquariello, M. Simeone, V. Cristini, S. Guido, Drop deformation
in microconfined shear flow, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 (2006) 054502-1-054502-4.
[64] H. Zhou, C. Pozrikidis, The flow of suspensions in channels—single files of drops,
Phys. Fluids A 5 (1993) 311–324.
[65] P.L. Maffettone, M. Minale, Equation of change for ellipsoidal drops in viscous
flow, J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 78 (1998) 227–241.
[66] C.E. Chaffey, H. Brenner, A second-order theory for shear deformation of drops,
J. Colloid Interface Sci. 24 (1967) 258–269.
[67] C.W. Macosko, Rheology: Principles, Measurement, and Applications, Viscous
Liquid, VCH Publishers Inc., 1994, pp. 65–108, Chapter 2.
[68] T. Chinyoka, Numerical simulation of stratified flows and droplet deformation
in 2D shear flow of Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids, PhD Thesis, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2004.
[69] J. Zhang, The dynamics of a viscous drop with a moving contact line, PhD Thesis,
Northwestern University, 2003.
[70] F.P. Bretherton, The motion of long bubbles in tubes, J. Fluid Mech. 10 (1961)
166–188.