Electrospray

The electrospray is a technique for producing clouds of charged droplets by means of a conductive nozzle connected to a high voltage with respect to a grounded counterlectrode. An electrified jet is issued from the nozzle and undergoes different instability, of which Rayleigh-Plateau instability leads to a spray of charged droplets.

We have studied the dynamics of this spray by two different method: (i) simulating the trajectory of each drop under the effect of the outer electric field and the Coulomb force exerted on the drop by each other and (ii) by coupling an Eulerian approach for to cloud with the leaky-dielectric model for the electrified cone-jet region. Drops are injected from the jet and removed when they arrive at the counter electrode, from which the distribution of drop deposition on the counter-electrode is obtained as a function of the radial position.