Droplet coalescence in fluids obeying Darcy's law

Abstract

During drop coalescence, a connecting bridge of fluid forms and rapidly expands due to surface tension. For spherical drops, these dynamics are well understood in both the viscous and inertial regimes. However, under strong confinement, fluid motion is fundamentally altered by geometric constraints, leading to dissipation on small lengthscales. We investigate the coalescence of drops confined in a Hele-Shaw cell (two parallel plates separated by a narrow gap). In this geometry, the depth-averaged flow is governed by Darcy's law while surface tension drives the interface motion. We identify two distinct temporal regimes in the evolution of the bridge radius that evolves as a power law ($R_b$). At early times, the bridge grows as $R_b \sim t^{1/2}$, which results from a confinement-dependent meniscus instability that determines the initiation of contact between droplets prior to bridge formation. At later times, the bridge growth slows substantially and follows $R_b \sim t^{1/5}$, consistent with recent theoretical predictions for Darcy-governed coalescence. We show that the transition between these regimes is controlled by several geometric lengthscales. In particular, the onset of the Darcy regime occurs when the interface radius of curvature becomes comparable to the plate spacing, such that the flow becomes fully confined. Using a boundary integral formulation, we find that both scaling laws for $R_b$ are determined by the bridge width. Together, these results identify a new universal regime of drop coalescence in a broad class of fluids obeying Darcy's law.