Abstract
The pinch-off of a drop of viscous fluid is observed using high-speed digital imaging. The behavior seen by previous authors is observed here: namely, the filament that attaches the drop to the orifice evolves into a primary thread attached to a much thinner, secondary thread by a slight bulge. Here, we observe that the lengths of the primary and secondary threads are reproducible among experiments to within 3% and 10%. The secondary thread becomes unstable as evidenced by wave-like disturbances. The actual pinch-off does not occur at the point of attachment between the secondary thread and the drop. Instead, it occurs between the disturbances on the secondary thread. After the initial pinch-off, additional breaks occur between the disturbances, resulting in several secondary satellite drops with a broad distribution of sizes. The pinch-off of the thread at the orifice is similar to that at the drop with one main difference: there is no distinct secondary thread. Instead, the primary thread necks down monotonically until wave-like disturbances form, resulting in pinch-off at multiple sites in between. The speed of the tips of the retreating, secondary threads after pinch-off are reported and discussed in the context of various scaling laws.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3188-3200 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Physics of Fluids |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 1997 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Computational Mechanics
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering
- Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes