A Level-Set Method for Simulation of a Thermal Inkjet Process

Abstract

A numerical approach is presented for computing a thermal inkjet process, in which bubble growth and collapse acts as a driving mechanism for ink droplet ejection. The liquid-vapor and liquid-air interfaces are tracked by a level-set method which is modified to include the effect of phase change at the liquid-vapor interface and is extended to treat the contact angle condition at an immersed solid surface. The compressibility effect of a bubble is also included in the analysis to account for the high vapor pressure caused by instantaneous bubble nucleation. The whole process of the thermal inkjet, including jet breaking, satellite droplet formation, and ink refill, as well as bubble growth and collapse, is simulated without employing a simplified bubble growth model.

A Sharp-Interface Level-Set Method for Simulation of a Piezoelectric Inkjet Process

“…The mass equation (8) and the momentum equation (9) are solved by employing the projection method. We decompose Eq.…”

“…Also, their method was based on diffuse-interface modeling, in which the interface is treated as a transition region smoothed over several grid spacings. Suh and Son [9] extended the diffuseinterface LS method for simulation of a thermal inkjet process including bubble growth and collapse as well as ink droplet ejection. In the earlier work of Aleinov et al [10], a coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid (CLSVOF) method was developed to compute the formation of droplets in microscale jetting devices.…”

Numerical simulation of the quenching process in liquid jet impingement

“…The step function α a is initialized for the liquid-air region and tracked by the LS function ϕ as described by Suh and Son [25].…”

Numerical Simulation of Bubble Growth in Liquid Jet Impingement on a Hot Plate

“…(19) implies that a near-zero level set rather than φ = 0 is used as the immobile boundary condition during the reinitialization procedure (18) . The step function α a is initialized for the air region and tracked by the LS function φ as described by Suh and Son (18) .…”