The Saturnian droplet

Electrohydrodynamic instabilities at liquid interfaces continue to defy our intuition, from the pioneering work of Taylor (Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A, vol. 280, issue 1382, 1964, pp. 383–397) on conical tips of electrified droplets to a recent numerical study by Wagoner et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 904,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of fluid mechanics 2021-02, Vol.908, Article F1
Main Author: Marin, A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dielectric strength
Droplets
Electric fields
Electrohydrodynamics
Electromagnetism
Equator
Experiments
Focus on Fluids
Interfaces
Robustness (mathematics)
Shape
Toruses
Viscosity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Electrohydrodynamic instabilities at liquid interfaces continue to defy our intuition, from the pioneering work of Taylor (Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A, vol. 280, issue 1382, 1964, pp. 383–397) on conical tips of electrified droplets to a recent numerical study by Wagoner et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 904, 2020, R4). The problem studied by Wagoner et al. (2020) consists of a droplet immersed in a more conducting and more dielectric liquid medium, in a strong electrical field. When the droplet is more viscous than the outer medium, the droplet develops a biconcave shape which might eventually evolve to a torus shape (or doughnut). In contrast, when the droplet is less viscous, it adopts a lenticular shape and emits a thin fluid sheet from its equator which in turn breaks up into droplets. These droplets form a ring of satellites around the original droplet, which justifies its appellation ‘Saturnian droplet’. The numerical simulations bring light to this complex phenomenon and confirm the robustness of the leaky-dielectric framework (Melcher & Taylor, Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech., vol. 1, 1969, pp. 111–146).
ISSN:0022-1120
1469-7645
DOI:10.1017/jfm.2020.988