Thermo-electro-hydrodynamic model for electrospinning process

Ultra-fine polymer fibers, obtained by electrospinning, have a wide range of potential applications such as fluid filtration, biomedicine, catalyst supports, drug delivery, tissue engineering, nanowires, to just say few. Yet theoretical modeling the spinning process remains a bottleneck severely hampering further improvement in both quality and efficiency. This paper establishes a mathematical model to explore the physics behind electrospinning. When electrical force is dominant over the other forces, Bratu equation is derived, which can explain the instability (bifurcation) in electrospinning. A variational model is also established.

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