Abstract:To study the electric field effect of conductive droplets with low conductivity, an electrohydrodynamic atomization (EHDA) solver based on the leaky dielectric model and the volume of fluid (VOF) method is designed by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software OpenFOAM. The numerical results are compared with Taylor’s analytical values, and the simulation results predict the deformation ways of droplets and the mode of circumfluence inside and outside the droplets. It is found that under the action of an external electric field, the droplets will become “prolate” or “oblate” and form stable circumfluence inside, and they only undergo deformation without any macroscopic motion. As the intensity of the electric field increases, the deformation of the droplets also intensifies. In the case of small deformation, the simulated values are consistent with the analytical values, which verifies the correctness of the numerical method. When the droplet deformation is considerable, the simulation results start to deviate from the theoretical values, which is consistent with the experimental observations. In addition, the effect of the change in conductivity on droplet deformation is also apparent, while the evolution of the dielectric constant ratio has a less pronounced impact on droplet deformation.