Stability of a liquid jet into incompressible gases and liquids: Part 2. Effects of the irrotational viscous pressure

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the effects of an irrotational, viscous pressure on the stability of a liquid jet into gases and liquids. The analysis extends our earlier work (part 1) in which the stability of the viscous jet was studied assuming that the motion and pressure are irrotational and the viscosity enters through the jump in the viscous normal stress in the normal stress balance at the interface. The liquid jet is always unstable; at high Weber numbers the instability is dominated by capillary instability; at low W the instability is dominated by Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) waves generated by pressures driven by the discontinuous velocity. In the irrotational analysis the viscosity is important but the effects of shear are neglected. In fact a discontinuous velocity is not compatible with the continuity of the tangential components of velocity and shear stress so that KH instability is not properly posed for exact study using the no-slip condition but some of the effects of viscosity can be ascertained using viscous potential flow. The theory is called viscous potential flow (VPF). Here we develop another irrotational theory in which the discontinuities in the irrotational tangential velocity and shear stress are eliminated in the global energy balance by selecting viscous contributions to the irrotational pressure. These pressures generate a hierarchy of potential flows in powers of the viscosity, but only the first one, linear in viscosity, in the irrotational viscous stress, is thought to have physical significance. The tangential velocity and shear stress in an irrotational study cannot be made continuous, but the effects of the discontinuous velocity and stress in the mechanical energy balance can be removed “in the mean.” This theory with the additional viscous pressure is called VCVPF, viscous correction of VPF. VCVPF is VPF with the additional pressures. The theory here cannot be compared with an exact solution, which would not allow the discontinuous velocity and stress. In other problems, like capillary instability, in which VCVPF can be compared with an exact solution, the agreements are uniformly excellent in the wave number when one of the fluids is gas and in good but not uniform, agreement when both fluids are liquids.