Investigation of the bag-breakup phenomena of the spray generation processes during wind-wave interaction in the laboratory experiments with optical methods

Abstract

Abstract Present paper devoted to the investigations with optical methods processes of artificially induced bag-breakup type of spray formation phenomenon within wind-wave interaction. Experiments were carried out on the Thermostratified Wind-Wave Tank of the IAP RAS. High-speed video filming with the shadow imaging method demonstrated that it was possible to artificially reproduce all the main stages of this phenomenon, which are also observed for the sporadically occurred ones: inflation of a thin membrane surrounded by a thicker rim, rupture of the membrane leading to the formation of small droplets, fragmentation of the rim with the formation of large droplets. Special processing of the images allowed us to estimate typical lifetimes and sizes of membrane for artificial bag-breakup events which turned out to be close to the same parameters for sporadically occurred ones.