Energy conversion during the crown evolution of the drop impact upon films.

• The energy conversion is proposed to study the crown evolution of the drop impact upon film. • The effects of both the ratio of initial kinetic energy to surface tension energy of the drop and the initial film thickness on the energy conversion during the impact process are analyzed in detail. • The crown evolution can be divided into five stages based on the energy conversion and flow characteristics. • The impact phenomenon can be divided into three types: the drop impacts on shallow, medium and deep films. • For all the film depths, the inertial force and surface tension both play important roles. The energy conversion is proposed to analyze the effects of inertial force, surface tension, gravitational force and viscous force during the crown evolution of the drop impact phenomena. The incompressible laminar Navier–Stokes equations coupled with the volume of fluid model are solved numerically in the axisymmetric frame to simulate the impact process. The influences of both the ratio of the initial kinetic energy to the surface tension energy of the drop as well as the initial film thickness on the energy conversion during the impact process are studied in detail. The ratio of the initial kinetic energy to the surface tension energy of the drop can affect the energy conversion at a very early stage of the impact process, thus it can affect the occurrence of prompt splash significantly; while the initial film thickness can affect the energy conversion process during the whole impact process, and it is related to the occurrence of delayed splash. The energy conversion process corresponds to the type of impact phenomena, which is affected by the film depth significantly. according to the differences in energy curves and flow characteristics, the impact phenomenon is divided into three types: the drop impacts on shallow, medium and deep films. A typical impact process of the medium film is analyzed in detail. The impact process is divided into five stages, namely, crown formation, crown growth, crown stabilization, crown collapse and central jet formation. In the crown formation and growth stages, inertial force promotes the deformation of the liquid-gas interface and surface tension prevents the deformation; while in the crown collapse stage, inertial force prevents the deformation and surface tension does the opposite effect. During the whole process, the viscous force plays a prevention effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]