Behavior of cylindrical liquid jets evolving in a transverse acoustic field

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical and an experimental investigation of low-velocity cylindrical liquid jets submitted to transverse planar acoustic waves. For this purpose, the behavior of a liquid jet traversing the section of a Kundt tube was examined. Experiments reported that the liquid jet could be either deviated from its trajectory or deformed as a succession of lobes oriented in space and whose length and width depend on the jet acoustic environment. Furthermore, for a sufficient acoustic velocity, the jet deformation increases in such proportion that a premature and vivid atomization mechanism disintegrates the liquid flow. Theoretical models are proposed to understand these behaviors. The first one calls out for acoustic radiation pressure to explain the jet deviation. The second one consists in a modal analysis of the vibrations of a jet when submitted to a transverse stationary acoustic field. As a first approach, a simplified two-dimensional model is proposed. This model reports that a sudden exposition of the jet to an acoustic field triggers two jet eigenmodes. One of them induces jet deformations that were not experimentally observed. This part of the solution emerges due to theoretical deficiencies. However, the second mode reproduces the lobe formation and leads to atomization criteria in good agreement with the experimental results. The paper ends with an extension of the mathematical development in three dimensions in order to provide a basis to a more consistent model.