Linear Instability of Liquid Sheets Subjected to a Transverse Electric Field

Abstract

Abstract A temporal linear instability analysis was performed for a liquid sheet moving around the inviscid gas in transverse electrical field. The fluid was described by the leaky-dielectric model, which is more complex and more comparable to the liquid electrical properties than existing models. As a result, the sinuous and the varicose modes exist, in which the dimensionless dispersion relation between wave number and temporal growth rate can be derived as a 3 × 3 matrix. According to this relationship, the effects of liquid properties on sheet instability were performed. It was concluded that, as the electrical Euler number (Eu), the ratio of gas-to-liquid density (ρ), Weber number (We), Reynolds number (Re), and the relative relaxation time (τ) increased, the instability of the sheet was enhanced. This work also compared the leaky-dielectric model with the perfect conductor model and found that the unstable growth rate in the leaky-dielectric model was higher than the one in the perfect conductor model. Moreover, as the ratio of gas-to-liquid improved, this difference decreased. Finally, an energy approach was adopted to investigate the instability mechanism for the two models.