5838 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 53, NO.
6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
An Experimental Study of the Electrohydrodynamic
Characteristics of Sedimenting Drops Under Uniform
Alternating Electric Fields
Rajorshi Paul, Guttapalli Naveen Kumar, Shubhadeep Mandal, N. K. Kishore
Saurav Pramanik, and Suman Chakraborty
Abstract—Electrohydrodynamic motion and deformation of a
sedimenting drop in the presence of a uniform alternating elec-
tric field is investigated experimentally. Application of an electric
field causes a drop to deform to an ellipsoidal shape. As a result of
this deformation, the terminal velocity of the drop is affected. In
this study, a detailed experimental investigation of the effect of a
horizontally directed uniform alternating electric field on the sed-
imentation velocity and deformation characteristics of deionized
water drop and silicone oil drop falling in castor oil medium is
presented. Both water and silicone oil drops are found to deform
to a prolate shape on application of electric field, which retards the
drop motion in the vertical direction. There is a marked decrease
in drop velocity with increase in strength of the alternating electric
field.
Index Terms—Alternating electric field, electrohydrodynamics
(EHD), leaky dielectric, sedimenting drop, silicone oil.
I. INTRODUCTION
LECTROHYDRODYNAMICS (EHD) examines the mo-
E tion of fluids under the influence of an external electric
field. EHD finds potential applications in diverse disciplines of
engineering including a variety of industrial processes as well
as modern day microfluidic devices. Some of the important ap-
plications of EHD in microfluidics are in mineral oil refinement,
droplet enclosed transport of living biological cells, enhanced
heat and mass transfer and for providing controlled environment
for conducting biochemical reactions [1]–[4], [24].
An externally applied uniform electric field causes a neutrally
buoyant drop to deform to an ellipsoidal shape [5]. Experiments
Manuscript received October 6, 2016; revised May 17, 2017; accepted June
18, 2017. Date of publication June 25, 2017; date of current version November
20, 2017. Paper 2016-EPC-0865.R1, presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of
the Electrostatics Society of America, West Lafayette, IN, USA, and approved
for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS by the
Electrostatic Processes Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society.
(Corresponding author: N. K. Kishore.)
R. Paul, G. N. Kumar, S. Mandal, and S. Chakraborty are with the
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology
Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India (e-mail: rajorshipaul.iitkgp@gmail.com;
naveenguttapalli@gmail.com; shubhadeep.mechanical@gmail.com; suman@
mech.iitkgp.ernet.in).
N. K. Kishore and S. Pramanik are with the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India
(e-mail: kishor@ee.iitkgp.ernet.in; saurav.pramanik@ee.iitkgp.ernet.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2017.2720140
0093-9994 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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, Senior Member, IEEE,
conducted by Allan and Mason [6] reveal that a neutrally buoy-
ant drop can deform to a prolate (major axis of the ellipsoid
is aligned in the direction of external electric field) or oblate
(major axis of the ellipsoid is aligned perpendicular to the di-
rection of external electric field) shape in the presence of steady
uniform electric field. Taylor’s classical leaky dielectric model
for neutrally buoyant drops predicts that the prolate or oblate
shape deformation is determined by the electrical conductivity,
permittivity, and viscosity of the drop and suspending medium
[7], [8]. The leaky dielectric model assumes a small but finite
electrical conductivities for the fluid pair which give rise to tan-
gential electric stresses at the drop interface. These electrical
stresses drive fluid motion thereby generating hydrodynamic
stresses. The shape of the drop is determined by a balance be-
tween the electric, hydrodynamic and capillary stresses. Based
on the leaky dielectric model, there have been several studies
on drop deformation and motion in the presence of uniform and
nonuniform dc electric field to obtain the drop shape and ve-
locity [9]–[15]. Drop dynamics in alternating electric field was
first considered by Torza et al. [16]. They demonstrated that the
deformation can be decomposed into a steady component, and
a time-dependent component which oscillates at a frequency
twice that of the frequency of imposed electric field. This was
experimentally verified by Vizika and Saville [17]. These stud-
ies investigate the effect of the electric field on neutrally buoyant
drops only. The effect of gravity has been ignored.
A fluid drop having density higher than the suspending
medium falls vertically in the presence of gravity and the sed-
imentation velocity of the drop is given by the Hadamard-
Rybczynski solution [18]. The drop shape, in this case, has
been found to be spherical. Xu and Homsy [19] experimentally
investigated the sedimentation velocity of a leaky dielectric drop
under the combined influence of steady electric field and grav-
ity. They have shown that velocity of the drop is significantly
affected by the shape deformation and interfacial charge con-
vection effects. In a very recent study, Bandopadhyay et al. [20]
studied the lateral migration of a sedimenting drop under the
influence of an inclined electric field. Most of the studies on
drop sedimentation in gravity till date have been focused on
the dynamics of the drops under the influence of steady electric
fields. There have been studies on the deformation of neutrally
buoyant drops in alternating electric fields. However, the sed-
imenting of drops under the influence of alternating electric
 PAUL et al.: EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE ELECTROHYDRODYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SEDIMENTING DROPS
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the experimental setup.
fields has not been studied in detail. This paper presents an ex-
perimental study on the effect of alternating electric fields on the
sedimentation velocity and deformation of conducting as well as
leaky dielectric drops. Toward this, experiments on two differ-
ent drop-medium systems, deionized (DI) water drop suspended
in castor oil and silicone oil drop suspended in castor oil, have
been performed. The first system resembles a perfectly conduct-
ing drop in leaky dielectric medium, while the second system
represents a leaky dielectric drop in leaky dielectric medium.
The study focuses on the alteration in drop shape and associated
modification in drop settling velocity. The drop shape is strongly
influenced by the EHD flow. The present study can be useful
in microfluidic and medical systems to manipulate suspended
drops.
II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The experiments are conducted in a Perspex cell having in-
ternal dimensions of 14 cm ×14 cm × 20 cm. Two square
electrodes of cross section 12 cm × 12 cm are fitted inside
the cell, facing each other. The electrodes, which are 5 mm in
thickness, are so placed that the distance between the two is
maintained constant at 12 cm throughout the experiments. To
ensure that the electric field between the electrodes is uniform,
all sharp edges are filed off and the surfaces of the electrodes are
polished. Thick copper wires are used for making all electrical
connections to prevent corona formation at high voltages. The
drops are injected manually using a 5 mL hypodermic syringe
from the center of the cross section of the cell. This is done
to minimize the wall effects on the motion of the drop. Alter-
nating electric field is applied through a high voltage testing
transformer rated at 60 kV. The oscillation frequency remains
constant at 50 Hz throughout the experiments. For illumination,
an LED panel backlight is used. The experiments are recorded
using two cameras. For measuring the sedimentation velocity,
a Nikon digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera is used. The
DSLR camera is set to record videos at 50 frames per second.
For observing the drop deformation, a high speed camera capa-
ble of recording at 200 frames per second is used. Fig. 1 shows
the schematic diagram of the experimental setup.
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5839
TABLE I
PROPERTIES OF EXPERIMENTAL FLUIDS
Experimental fluids Castor oil Silicone oil Deionized water
Density (kg/m³) 958 1023 995
Viscosity (Pa·s) 0.693 0.0232 0.001
Electrical conductivity (S/m) 2.78 × 10–10 9.26 × 10–11 20.7 × 10–5
Dielectric constant 7.70 3.88 78
The experiments are carried out in castor oil medium with
DI water and silicone oil as the drop phases. The fluids used in
the experiments are Newtonian and incompressible in nature.
Castor oil is a transparent, viscous liquid with small electrical
conductivity and can sustain very high electric fields. This makes
it an ideal choice for a leaky dielectric dispersing medium. The
immiscible drop and the dispersing phases have comparable
densities but the ratios of viscosities of the dispersing phase to
the drop phases are significant. As a result, the sedimentation
velocity of the drops is small and the characteristics of the sed-
imentation can be observed with ease. Silicone oil has a very
low electrical conductivity, and thus the silicone oil–castor oil
system resembles a leaky dielectric drop in a leaky dielectric
medium. The electrical conductivity of DI water is much higher
than that of silicone oil. Hence, the water–castor oil system rep-
resents a perfectly conducting drop in a leaky dielectric medium.
The properties of the chosen experimental fluids are shown in
Table I.
III. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
Before starting the experiments, proper precautions are taken
to ensure that the experiments run safely. To avoid sparking from
the connecting wires, the camera and the LED light source are
positioned at a safe distance from the cell. Such electrical dis-
charge can not only damage the instruments, but also may cause
the glass cell to explode. As the drop injection is performed
manually, the volume of injected drop cannot be controlled pre-
cisely. Although this can be achieved using a syringe pump, one
needs to make special adjustments to the instrument to obtain
detachment of the viscous silicone oil drop from the syringe tip.
 5840 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 53, NO. 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
TABLE II
EXPERIMENTAL MATRIX
Experiment Range of Range of Range of drop
electric field Reynolds number
(kV/cm) −3
(10 )
Water in castor oil without 0 1.34–13.4
electric field
Silicone oil in castor oil 0 0.36–2.00
without electric field
Water in castor oil with 0.83–2.08 1.03–4.56
electric field
Silicone oil in castor oil 0.42–4.17 0.27–4.42
with electric field
Due to the viscosity of the oil, the drops (specially the smaller
ones) tend to stick to syringe tip and it is easier to have human
intervention while injecting the drop. By this process, one has
to sacrifice control over injected drop volume; however, the size
of the injected drop can be calculated with acceptable degree of
accuracy from image processing. The variation of drop diame-
ter is an important parameter in the present study. The manual
injection inadvertently presents an advantage where one is able
to generate an almost continuous range of drop diameter. The
downside is that to ensure repeatability, a large number of ex-
periments needs to be conducted. After the drop falls through a
certain height inside the cell, the voltage is applied through the
transformer. The drop falls through a height of around 80 mm
under the influence of the electric field after which measure-
ments are taken. This ensures that the drop attains a steady
sedimentation velocity before it reaches the bottom of the elec-
trodes in the cell which has been verified by image processing.
The drop size is varied for each voltage value from 1 to 6 mm
in diameter. The value of the voltage is increased in steps of
5 kV from 5 to 50 kV for the silicone oil–castor oil pair, and in
steps of 3 kV from 10 to 25 kV for the water–castor oil pair. A
detailed experimental matrix is provided in Table II. As the den-
sity difference between the experimental fluids is very small, the
duration of each experiment varies from 1 to 10 min depend-
ing on the drop size. The experimental videos are processed
using the Image Processing Toolbox in MATLAB. The results
obtained from MATLAB are cross-checked by manual process-
ing to ensure the accuracy of the processing. All data generated
from the experiments correspond to drops near the bottom of
the electrodes in the experimental cell when the drops reach a
steady terminal velocity.
IV. RESULTS
A. Velocity of a Sedimenting Drop in the Absence of Any
External Electric Field
Before investigating the influence of externally applied elec-
tric fields on the sedimentation velocity of a drop, it would be
noteworthy to review the influence of gravity alone on the sedi-
mentation velocity of the drop in the absence of any externally
applied electric field. A drop sedimenting under the influence of
gravity reaches a terminal velocity when the buoyancy force is
balanced by the hydrodynamic drag force acting on the drop sur-
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diameter
(mm)
2.86–6.43
1.93–3.53
2.85–5.00
1.82–4.28
Fig. 2. Variation of sedimentation velocity with drop radius for a silicone oil
drop falling in castor oil under the influence of gravity.
face by virtue of its motion in a viscous medium. The buoyancy
force is proportional to the volume of the drop, i.e., Fg ∝ R3 .
In contrast, the drag force is proportional to the product of the
velocity and radius of the drop, i.e., Fdrag ∝ U∞ R. Hence, from
the force balance, Fg = Fdrag , it can be qualitatively concluded
that the drop velocity should increase proportional to the square
of the drop radius. The drop assumes a shape such that the hy-
drodynamic stresses are balanced by the surface tension acting
at the interface between the drop and the suspending medium.
The analytical expression for the terminal velocity U∞ of a
drop sedimenting in another immiscible fluid medium in the
absence of any body force other than gravity is given by the
Hadamard-Rybczynski solution [18] as follows:
 
2 λ + 1 R2 gρ (κ − 1)
U∞ = (1)
9 λ + 23 μ
where λ and κ are the ratio of the viscosities and densities of
the drop to the dispersing medium, respectively, μ and ρ are
the viscosity and density of the suspending medium, respec-
tively, R is the drop radius, and g is the acceleration due to
gravity. The analytical solution also reveals that the drop would
be perfectly spherical. The Hadamard-Rybczynski solution is
applicable only in the case of low Reynolds number drop sed-
imentation, where the Stokes flow approximation is valid. For
a sedimenting drop, the Reynolds number Re is calculated as
follows:
ρU∞ R
Re = . (2)
μ
Fig. 2 shows the experimentally observed variation of the
sedimentation velocity with the drop radius for the silicone oil
drop suspended in castor oil medium in the absence of electric
field.
As the density of silicone oil is higher than that of castor oil
(refer to Table I for property values), the drop settles down under
the influence of gravity. The points plotted in red correspond
 PAUL et al.: EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE ELECTROHYDRODYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SEDIMENTING DROPS
Fig. 3. Variation of sedimentation velocity with drop diameter for different
electric fields. In this case, the water drop falls in castor oil medium.
to the experimentally observed velocities and the dotted line
represents the theoretically predicted values calculated from (1).
A close match is obtained between the experimentally obtained
values and those predicted by theory. It is also observed that the
drop remains spherical while sedimenting under the influence of
gravity. The sedimenting of drops under the influence of gravity
is a well-studied phenomenon. Hence, a close agreement of
experimental results with theory shows that the experimental
procedure and the postprocessing followed in this study are
fairly accurate.
B. Sedimentation Velocity Under Uniform Horizontal
Alternating Electric Field
After establishing a fair understanding of the influence of
gravity forces, the influence of horizontally applied uniform
alternating electric field on the sedimentation velocity of a drop
is presented in this section. In the presence of an external electric
field, in addition to the drop radius, the sedimentation velocity
also depends on the strength of the externally applied electric
field. First, the sedimentation of water drop in castor oil is
discussed. As the water drop settles in the immiscible castor oil
medium, the velocity of the drop increases initially and reaches
a steady value when the net force on the drop becomes zero.
At steady state, the hydrodynamic force acting on the drop is
balanced by the buoyancy force. The hydrodynamic force is
influenced by the presence of the electric field bringing about a
deformation in the settling drop.
Fig. 3 depicts the variation of sedimentation velocity with the
drop diameter for different values of the electric field strength
for DI water drops settling in castor oil medium. To demon-
strate the effect of an electric field, settling velocities in the
absence of an external electric field are plotted in the same
graph. Fig. 3 shows that for similar sized drops, the sedimen-
tation velocity decreases with an increase in the electric field
strength. Also, the settling velocity increases as the diameter
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5841
Fig. 4. Variation of silicone oil drop sedimentation velocity with drop diameter
for different electric fields.
Fig. 5. Quantification of drop deformation.
of the drop increases with the strength of the external electric
field held constant. Several theoretical and experimental stud-
ies on neutrally buoyant drops have established the fact that
a perfectly dielectric drop always deforms to a prolate shape
in the presence of uniform electric field [10], [21], [22]. This
is due to the fact that the perfectly dielectric drop surface is
charge free, which yields vanishing tangential electric field at
the drop surface. A perfectly conducting drop (e.g., DI water
drop) also deforms to a prolate shape. Though the drop surface
has charges, the tangential electric field vanishes at the drop
surface, which yields vanishing tangential electric stress. Thus,
a perfectly dielectric/conducting drop encounters only normal
component of electric stress which causes the drop shape to
stretch in the direction of electric field. The prolate shape is
associated with an increase in cross-sectional area of the drop
in the direction of sedimentation. This increased cross-sectional
area leads to increase in hydrodynamic drag force on the drop
which reduces the drop velocity for a given drop radius. The
increase in the settling velocity with an increase in the drop size
can be attributed to increase in gravitational body force acting
on the drop.
Fig. 4 plots the variation of silicone oil drop velocity in cas-
tor oil with drop diameter for three values of electric field
 5842 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 53, NO. 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
Fig. 6. Shapes of silicone oil drops observed at the electric field strengths of (a) 0, (b) 2.92 kV/cm, and (c) 4.17 kV/cm (peak values). Drop diameters are similar
in all the three cases.
strength. The sedimentation velocities of similar sized drops
decrease with increase in the electric field strength. Gener-
ally, for the case of a leaky dielectric drop in a leaky dielec-
tric medium, in addition to the shape deformation, the charge
convection at the interface between the two media governs the
magnitude of the settling velocity. In sharp contrast to perfectly
dielectric/conducting drop (e.g., water drop), the tangential elec-
tric field does not vanish at the interface in case of a leaky di-
electric drop (e.g., silicone oil drop). The nonzero tangential
electric field acting on the interfacial charge distribution exerts
an EHD drag force on the drop. The tangential electric forces
also induce charge convection currents inside the drop. Previ-
ously, Xu and Homsy [19] have investigated the effect of charge
convection on the velocity of a drop settling under the influence
of steady electric fields. But in case of alternating electric fields,
the effect of charge convection can be ignored since there is
no steady component of the surface charge density at the inter-
face [23]. So, the shape deformation can be considered as the
only contributing factor. It has been experimentally observed
that a silicone oil drop sedimenting in castor oil medium as-
sumes a prolate shape which leads to increase in cross-sectional
area of the drop in the direction of sedimentation. This further
increases the hydrodynamic drag, resulting in reduction in the
drop velocity for higher field strength.
C. Deformation Under Uniform Horizontal Alternating
Electric Field
Application of an external electric field causes a spherical
drop sedimenting under the influence of gravity to deform into a
prolate or an oblate shape depending on the electrical properties
of the media. The deformation of the drop has been observed to
be dependent on the strength of the electric field as well as on the
size of the injected drop. Following the arguments presented in
the previous sections, the extent of shape deformation governs
the sedimentation velocity of the drop. The drop deformation is
quantified in terms of the deformation ratio D which is defined
as follows:
 
a−b
D= (3)
a+b
where a is the length of the drop axis parallel to the direction
of the electric field (horizontal in the present case) and b is the
length of the axis perpendicular to it (vertical in the present case)
as shown in Fig. 5.
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Fig. 6 shows the variation of the drop deformation with the
electric field strength for the case of a silicone oil drop in castor
oil medium. The three images correspond to nearly equal drop
volumes. It can be seen that the drop deformation increases with
an increase in the strength of the electric filed. Another striking
feature in the presence of an electric filed is the asymmetry in
the drop shapes, i.e., the top half and the bottom half of the drop
are not identical. This asymmetry is more pronounced for higher
field strengths as shown in Fig. 6(c). Similar asymmetry in drop
shape is also reported by Xu and Homsy [19] for sedimenting of
drop in steady electric fields. This asymmetry can be attributed
to the nonlinear coupling of shape deformation and asymmetric
velocity at the drop surface due to settling.
The analytical solution derived by Torza et al. [16] shows
that the drop shape oscillates at a frequency twice that of the
imposed electric field. This has been validated experimentally
by Vizika and Saville [17] and Torza et al. [16] showed that the
deformation of the drop can be visualized as a superposition of a
steady component and a time varying component. In the present
experiments, the DSLR camera records at 50 frames per second
which is identical to the frequency of the applied electric field,
50 Hz. As a result, the camera captures the same point in the
cycle. Hence, the deformation recorded by the DSLR camera
remains constant. Also, as the frequency of the electric field
is high, the oscillatory part of the deformation is very small
compared to the steady component [17]. Hence, for all practical
purposes, the deformation observed from the DSLR camera
has been treated as the steady component of the deformation.
To capture the oscillation part of the droplet deformation, one
should employ frame rate higher than 100 frames. For neutrally
buoyant drops under the influence of alternating electric fields,
it has been shown that the steady part of the deformation Ds
varies as follows [16]:
9
Ds = ΦE02 R (4)
16γ
where E0 is the peak electric field and R is the radius of the un-
deformed drop,  is the permittivity of the dispersing medium,
γ is the surface tension, and Φ is a function of the ratios of
conductivity, permittivity, and viscosity. Present study reveals
similar trend for the steady-state deformation and the factor
E02 R as shown in Fig. 7. Both the water and silicone oil drops
deform to prolate shape which is depicted by positive values
of Ds . Deformation of water drops is found to be much higher
 PAUL et al.: EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE ELECTROHYDRODYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SEDIMENTING DROPS
Fig. 7. Variation of steady deformation with RE 0 2 for water and silicone oil drops.
than the silicone oil drops. This can be attributed to the fact
that water has an electrical conductivity much higher than sil-
icone oil. Also, it has been found that beyond a critical volt-
age, the drop splits while sedimenting into smaller drops. While
silicone oil drops remain stable for as high as 4.17 kV/cm, water
drops split at an electric field of around 2.2 kV/cm.
V. CONCLUSION
Present study experimentally investigates the EHD motion
and shape deformation of conducting and leaky dielectric vis-
cous drops during sedimentation in the presence of external
alternating electric field. The effect of the nonlinear coupling of
orthogonal gravitation and alternating electric fields on the mo-
tion and deformation characteristics of settling drops is studied.
Controlled experiments have been performed using DI water
and silicone oil drops suspended in castor oil medium by vary-
ing the strength of applied alternating electric field with fixed
frequency of 50 Hz. Experimental observation shows that the
horizontally applied electric filed retards the drop motion in
the vertical direction by deforming the drop to an asymmetric
prolate shape. The deformation is much more pronounced in the
case of DI water than silicone oil. Experimental measurement
shows that there is a significant decrease in drop velocity with
increase in strength of the applied electric field. These studies
on the motion of drops under the combined influence of grav-
ity and electric fields would help in designing more efficient
strategies for the separation of oils, and for drop manipulation
in microfluidic devices and medical systems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are grateful to Dr. R. M. Thaokar and Dr. M.
Vashishtha of the Chemical Engineering Department at the
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5843
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay for assistance in car-
rying out conductivity and permittivity measurements us-
ing a broadband Dielectric Spectrometer. They would also
like to thank the technical staff of the Electrical and
Mechanical Engineering Departments at the Indian Institute of
Technology Kharagpur for their cooperation while conducting
the experiments.
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Rajorshi Paul was born in Kolkata, India, in 1993.
He received the B.Tech. degree in mechanical en-
gineering from the Indian Institute of Technology
Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India, in 2016, and is cur-
rently working toward the M.Sc. degree in me-
chanical engineering with the University of Alberta,
Edmonton, AB, Canada.
His research interests include droplet-based elec-
trohydrodynamics, microfluidics, and biomicroflu-
idics.
Guttapalli Naveen Kumar is working toward the
bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, and
the master’s degree in thermal science and engi-
neering with the Department of Mechanical En-
gineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India, under the supervision
of Prof. Suman Chakraborty.
His research interests include droplet-based elec-
trohydrodynamics and applications of liquid crystals
in microfluidics.
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KHARAGPUR. Downloaded on April 30,2022 at 19:09:49 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Shubhadeep Mandal received the bachelor’s degree
in mechanical engineering from Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, India, in 2012, and the master’s degree in
thermal science and engineering from the Indian In-
stitute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, Kharagpur,
India, in 2014, where he is currently working toward
the Ph.D. degree with the Department of Mechanical
Engineering, under the supervision of Prof. Suman
Chakraborty.
The broad area of his research is microfluidics,
with particular emphasis on the influence of electric
field on the dynamics of drops and emulsions. He published 18 research articles
in journals such as the Journal of Fluids Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, Physical
Review E, and Physical Review Fluids.
N. K. Kishore (SM’96) received the B.E. degree
in electrical engineering from Osmania University,
Hyderabad, India, in 1983, and the M.E. degree in
electrical engineering (high voltage stream) and the
Ph.D. degree in lightning transients on electric power
systems from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc),
Bangalore, India, in 1985 and 1991, respectively.
He is currently a Full Professor of electrical
engineering and a Member of Associate Faculty
with the School of Energy Science and Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharag-
pur, India. He was a Scientific Officer (research projects) at IISc Bangalore,
Bangalore, from 1987 to 1991, working in the area of lightning interaction
with telecommunication circuits, and air crafts for defense applications. He
joined the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur in 1991. His
research interests include high voltage engineering, applications of high volt-
age engineering, power systems, lightning, electromagnetic interference and
electromagnetic compatibility (EMI/EMC), condition monitoring of power ap-
paratus, and renewable energy.
Dr. Kishore is a member of the Electrostatic Society of America and a fellow
of the Institution of Engineers.
Saurav Pramanik received the B.E. degree in
electrical engineering from Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, India, in 2006, and the M.Sc.(Engg.) and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Insti-
tute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 2010 and 2013,
respectively.
After completion of the Ph.D. degree, he was at
Corporate Research, ABB, Sweden, as a Postdoctoral
Research Fellow for approximately two years. Later,
he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering,
IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India, in January 2016, where he is currently an
Assistant Professor. His research interests include condition monitoring and di-
agnostics of high voltage power apparatus, and magnetics of power transformer.
Suman Chakraborty received the B.Eng. degree in
mechanical engineering from Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, India, in 1996, and the M.Eng. and Ph.D.
degrees in mechanical engineering from the Indian
Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 1999 and
2002, respectively.
He is currently a Professor with the School of
Medical Science and Technology, IIT Kharagpur.
His research interests include microfluidics and mi-
cro/nanoscale transport processes, including their
theoretical, computational, and experimental mod-
eling, encompassing the underlying fundamentals as well as biomedical,
biotechnological, chip cooling, and energy related applications. He has
350+ international journal publications.
Dr. Chakraborty received the Santi Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize in 2013.