Instability of a moving liquid sheet in the presence of acoustic forcing

Abstract

The excitation of thin planar liquid sheets formed by impinging two collinear water jets to acoustic waves was studied at varying frequencies and sound pressure levels (SPLs). Experiments were conducted over a range of liquid velocities that encompassed the stable and flapping regimes of the sheet. For a given frequency, there was a threshold value of SPL below which the sheet was unaffected. The threshold SPL increased with frequency. Further, the sheet was observed to respond to a set of specific frequencies lying in the range of 100–300 Hz, the frequency set varying with the Weber number of the liquid sheet. The magnitude of the response for a fixed pressure level, characterized by the reduction in the extent of the sheet, was larger at lower frequencies. The droplet sizes formed by the disintegration of the sheet reduced with an increase in the measured response and the drop-shedding frequency was near the imposed frequency. Model equations for inviscid flow and accounting for the varying pressure field across the moving liquid sheet of constant thickness was solved to determine the linear stability of the system. Numerical solution shows that the most unstable wavelengths in the presence of the forcing to be smaller than in the absence, which is in line with observations. Both the dilatational and sinuous modes are coupled at the lowest order and become significant for the range of acoustic forcing studied. The model calculation suggests that the parametric resonance involving the dilatational mode may be responsible for the observed instability although the model was unable to predict the observed variation of threshold SPL with frequency.