The electrostatic spray emitted from an electrified conical meniscus

Abstract

The electrostatic spray emitted from an electrified almost conical meniscus is analyzed in this work by means of a Lagrangian model using particle dynamics. Instead of solving the classical Poisson problem for the spray, we follow each one of the emitted particles and their mutual electrostatic interaction. The spray is shown to be dilute, allowing for essential simplifications on the particle aerodynamics. Computer simulations yield as many detailed spatial and statistical characterizations of the spray as one needs once the model is validated by actual experiments using laser-doppler anemometry and particle size analyzers also presented here. The experiments show that the theoretical model can predict not only the mean, but also the RMS of desired quantities such as droplet velocity and size at a certain point.