Criteria of High-Pressure Shockless Drop Breakup by Soliton-Type Gasdynamic Impulses

Abstract

A specific regime of liquid-drop breakup in the absence of pressure disturbances is considered. In contrast to the regimes studied earlier, this regime, realized when a drop crosses a sheet (a layer or jet) of gas moving in isobaric space, is called shockless drop breakup. Fragmentation occurs near a velocity contact discontinuity in the medium under the action of a gasdynamic impulse, whose duration is determined by the drop velocity and the dimensions of the discontinuity. When the impulse duration is close to the drop deformation time or the intrinsic-oscillation period, the drop response to the action of the external forces is not quasistatic. On the range of initial-pressure variation between 0.1 and 8 MPa, the criteria of onset of shockless breakup of ethanol and liquid-oxygen drops are established in the form of empirical relations for the critical Weber numbers. The coincidence of the critical conditions of realization of shockless drop breakup and the conditions of breakup induced by pressure disturbances is noted.