Three-dimensional simulations of the droplet formation during the inkjet printing process

The digital inkjet printing technology has been widely explored by the electronic industry in developing new manufacture processes. To shorten the design cycle, numerical simulations seem to be the required tool. In this paper, three-dimensional simulations of printhead printing process based on a numerical scheme comprised of a finite volume formulation for discretizing governing equations of the flow field and a volume-of-fluid method to predict the fluid interface are presented. The surface tension is modeled using a continuum surface force concept and thus computed as a function of the interfacial curvature. The contact angle between the fluid and the solid wall is explicitly enforced at the fluid interface. The parallel computation based on a domain decomposition strategy is employed to reduce the massive computation time required by fully three-dimensional computations. The numerical predictions of meniscus shape are similar to those published measurement results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.