Experimental statistics of droplet trajectory and air flow during aerodynamic fragmentation of liquid drops

The deformation and fragmentation of single ethyl alcohol drops injected into a continuous air-jet is experimentally investigated. High speed shadowgraphy coupled with image contour recognition is used to record the instantaneous droplet shape, trajectory, velocity and acceleration, while particle image velocimetry captures the gas-phase flow-field around the drop. All experiments are repeated hundreds of times in order to determine the statistics based mean flow behavior. Two conditions are considered one which leads to the bag breakup morphology and one leading to the sheet-thinning morphology. Comparing the two cases, no significant differences are observed in the structure of the gas-phase wake, indicating that gas-phase flow morphologies may not significantly affect the transition between liquid-phase breakup morphologies. The results of this investigation will be useful for the development and validation of simulation techniques. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.