Arrested coalescence of viscoelastic droplets: polydisperse doublets

Arrested droplet coalescence produces stable anisotropic shapes and is a key mechanism for microstructure development in foods, petroleum and pharmaceutical formulations. Past work has examined the dynamic elastic arrest of coalescing monodisperse droplet doublets and developed a simple model of doublet strain as a function of physical variables. Although the work describes experimental data well, it is limited to describing same-size droplets. A new model incorporating a generalized description of doublet shape is developed to describe polydisperse doublet formation in more realistic emulsion systems. Polydisperse doublets are shown to arrest at lower strains than monodisperse doublets as a result of the smaller contribution of surface area in a given pair. Larger droplet size ratios have lower relative degrees of strain because coalescence is arrested at an earlier stage than in more monodisperse cases. Experimental observations of polydisperse doublet formation indicate that the model under-predicts arrest strains at low solid levels and small droplet sizes. The discrepancy is hypothesized to be the result of nonlinear elastic deformation at high strains. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Soft interfacial materials: from fundamentals to formulation’.