(349g) Arrested Coalescence of Viscoelastic Droplets: Restructuring Dynamics

Microstructured viscoelastic droplets in oil-in-water emulsions can arrest during coalescence and acquire non-spherical shapes depending on their size, concentration and connectivity. The rheology and flow of these droplet networks has a strong effect on the texture and rheology of various foods, cosmetics, paints, and pharmaceutical products. Previous work examined monodisperse binary droplet interactions to develop a physical model of arrest and final droplet shape. This work considers the arrest of polydisperse droplets and structures formed from a larger number of droplets in order to develop a model of full emulsions. A new mechanism of arrested droplet restructuring is identified and shown to form denser networks, but only under specific conditions. Image analysis mapping distributions of strain through droplet networks is used as a way to determine the significance of arrest in an emulsion but also to better understand the interactions of interfacial and elastic driving forces. This work allows the design of anisotropic emulsion microstructures and prediction of the overall performance of formulations.