The capillary breakup of laminar liquid jets

A perturbation analysis of the capillary instability of an inviscid liquid jet of circular cross section was carried out to third order. The results show that the nonlinear terms are responsible for the formation of satellite drops. The dimensionless cutoff wavenumber, which separates regions of stability and instability, remains unity to third order. The present theory was used in a computer simulation of jet breakup and it was found that the predicted surface wave profiles, disturbance amplification rates and drop sizes are in substantial agreement with experimental data. This nonlinear breakup model is extended to accelerated jets by means of a contraction theory.

Experiments were performed to measure the size of drops resulting from the capillary breakup of laminar liquid jets. Random noise was used as a perturbation and the drop spectrometer was used to measure drop sizes. It was found that the breakup of accelerated jets is also attributable to the disrupting effect of the most unstable perturbation mode.

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