The circulation produced in a drop by an electric field is examined. Here leaky dielectric, used in the prototypal solution of Sir Geoffrey Taylor, is represented with an electrokinetic model of the charge transport. Singular perturbation meters are employed to obtain a description of the macroscopic response of the drop field. The remarkable result is that complete agreement is found between the condictions of the two models. Previously, it was thought that effects due to space accumulation at the drop surface, which had presumably been omitted from the dielectric, explained extant discrepancies between theory and experiment. The trokinctic model shows that, in an aggregate sense, the leaky dielectric accounts forthe space charge, and, so, the differences with the data remain unexplained.
Baygents, J.C., Saville, D.A., The Circulation Produced in a Drop by an Electric Field: A High Field Strength Electrokinetic Model, NATA Advanced Study Institute on Physicochemical Hydrodynamics, American Physics Society, College Park, MD pp. 7-17, 1989.