Capillary breakup of suspensions near pinch-off

We present new findings on how the presence of particles alters the pinch-off dynamics of a liquid bridge. For moderate concentrations, suspensions initially behave as a viscous liquid with dynamics determined by the bulk viscosity of the suspension. Close to breakup, however, the filament loses its homogeneous shape and localised accelerated breakup is observed. This paper focuses on quantifying these final thinning dynamics for different sized particles with radii between 3 mu m and 20 mu m in a Newtonian matrix with volume fractions ranging from 0.02 to 0.40. The dynamics of these capillary breakup experiments are very well described by a one-dimensional model that correlates changes in thinning dynamics with the particle distribution in the filament. For all samples, the accelerated dynamics are initiated by increasing particle-density fluctuations that generate locally diluted zones. The onset of these concentration fluctuations is described by a transition radius, which scales with the particle radius and volume fraction. The thinning rate continues to increase and reaches a maximum when the interstitial fluid is thinning between two particle clusters. Contrary to previous experimental studies, we observe that the final thinning dynamics are dominated by a deceleration, where the interstitial fluid appears not to be disturbed by the presence of the particles. By rescaling the experimental filament profiles, it is shown that the pinching dynamics return to the self-similar scaling of a viscous Newtonian liquid bridge in the final moments preceding breakup. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.