Arrested Coalescence of Microstructured Droplets: Emulsion Connectivity and Restructuring

The arrest of droplet coalescence has been shown to produce stable anisotropic shapes and to be a key mechanism for microstructure development in foods, petroleum, and pharmaceutical formulations. This work builds on a recent model of the dynamic arrest of binary coalescence by internal elastic structures and examines the formation of multi-droplet connections in a microstructured oil-in-water emulsion.  Droplet deformation in such systems, especially polydisperse ones, is shown to be highly variable with a strong history dependence even for systems that experience only linear elastic deformation. A model of multiple droplet arrested coalescence is developed and used to extend the previous model of binary interactions.