Atomization of acoustically forced liquid sheets

Abstract

Atomization of a smooth laminar liquid sheet produced by the oblique impingement of two liquid jets and subjected to transverse acoustic forcing in quiescent ambient is investigated. The acoustic forcing perturbs the liquid sheet perpendicular to its plane, thereby setting up a train of sinuous waves propagating radially outwards from the impingement point. These sheet undulations grow as the wave speed decreases towards the edge of the sheet and the sheet characteristics, like intact length and mean drop size, reduce drastically as compared to the natural breakup. Our observations show that the effect of the acoustic field is perceptible over a continuous range of forcing frequencies. Beyond a certain forcing frequency, called the cutoff frequency, the effect of the external acoustic field ceases. The cutoff frequency is found to be an increasing function of the Weber number. Our measurements of the characteristics of spatially amplifying sinuous waves show that the instabilities responsible for the natural sheet breakup augment in the presence of external forcing. Combining the experimental observations and measurements, we conclude that the linear theory of aerodynamic interaction (Squire’s theory) (Squire, Brit. J. Appl. Phys., vol. 4 (6), 1953, pp. 167–169) predicts the important features of this phenomenon reasonably well.