Deformation of a ferrofluid droplet in a simple shear flow under the effect of a constant magnetic field

Abstract: In the present work, we investigate the dynamics of a droplet of ferrofluid placed in a shear flow field subjected to the additional action produced by the application of a magnetic field in a direction perpendicular to the flow. The problem is solved in the framework of a moving-boundary method based on the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations complemented with the additional equations required for the determination of the magnetic force. The results reveal interesting changes in the trends displayed by the droplet deformation and inclination angle as a function of the capillary number when the intensity of the magnetic field is varied while maintaining flow conditions corresponding to the Stokes regime. The mechanism of droplet relaxation from equilibrium when the magnetic force is suddenly removed is also investigated. According to our numerical experiments the deformation evolves in time following a harmonic decaying process, which, in the limit of small capillary number, i.e. for very small deformations, can be fairly well represented by the temporal evolution of a simple damped harmonic oscillator.