Modelling electrospinning of nanofibres

Electrospinning is based on so-called bending instability which results in an erratic spiralling motion of the liquid jet as it proceeds towards a collecting electrode, where it is eventually deposited as a mat of micro/nanosized fibres. Most electrospinning models formulated within the slender approximation rely, however, on an inconsistent description of electrostatic interactions which renders them grossly inappropriate whenever the discretization is either too coarse or too fine. The present work aims at proposing a discrete slender model which is numerically consistent (allowing use of arbitrary fine meshes) and remains accurate even for coarse meshes. At the same time, efficient numerical techniques based on hierarchical charge clustering are introduced that drastically decrease computational times. Finally, a versatile boundary value method is implemented to enforce fixed-potential boundary conditions, allowing realistic electrode configurations to be investigated.