The dynamics of champagne cork popping revisited through high-speed schlieren imaging and computational fluid dynamics simulations

Abstract

Cork popping represents a rich and complex fluid dynamics process, involving up to three phases (liquid, gas, and solid), three main chemical compounds (ethanol, water, CO2), and a moving cork gradually opening the bottle and blocking the fast progression of the expanding gas. In this work, we used high-speed, high-sensitivity schlieren imaging setups to provide a fresh perspective on this dynamical phenomenon. Our experimental results are systematically compared and interpreted on the basis of new computational fluid dynamics simulations. Our combined experimental and numerical works confirm the establishment of two supersonic expansions during cork popping from a champagne bottle.