On the interaction forces between evaporating drops in charged liquid-drop systems

The pairwise hydrodynamic and electrostatic interaction between micrometer-sized water droplets at small distances between them due to their evaporation and the presence of an electric charge on at least one of them is considered. The velocities of the steady-state motion of charged water drops with radii of 1 and 10 µm evaporating in air are calculated. It is shown that at small distances between the drops the joint action of hydrodynamic attraction and polarization interaction, always of attraction type, favor the coalescence of the drops (or drops and solid particles), leading to the displacement of the maximum of the function of drop distribution over size to the region of greater sizes and the gravity sedimentation of large drops. At large distances between the drops, when the short-distance hydrodynamic and polarization attractive forces become smaller than the long-distance Coulomb repulsion forces between likely charged particles, this distance tends to increase. These phenomena give a microphysical explanation to the phenomenon of electrostatic blooming in optically dense smokes and mists.