Physical mechanisms for droplet size and effective viscosity asymmetries in turbulent emulsions
By varying the oil volume fraction, the microscopic droplet size and the macroscopic rheology of emulsions are investigated in a Taylor-Couette turbulent shear flow. Although here oil and water in the emulsions have almost the same physical properties (density and viscosity), unexpectedly, we find that oil-in-water (O/W) and water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions have very distinct hydrodynamic behaviours, i.e. the system is clearly asymmetric. By looking at the micro-scales, the average droplet diameter hardly changes with the oil volume fraction for O/W or for W/O.