Deformation and breakup of liquid drops in a gas stream at nearly critical Weber numbers

Abstract

Experimentally determined values of the critical Weber number available from the literature are scattered over a very wide range ofWec from 2.2 to 99.6. To study one possible source of these discrepancies an experimental investigation was made of the deformation and breakup of water droplets at nearly critical Weber numbers. Experiments were conducted in a small horizontal wind tunnel. A continuous stream of uniform water droplets was allowed to fall perpendicularly to the continuous stream of air. The time histories of water droplets were recorded by using a high speed camera. Five different basic behaviours of water droplets were recorded in the range ofWe = 11 to 14. It was found that an increase in the Weber number in this region resulted in an increased percentage of droplets with regular bag type breakup.