Transitions of breakup regimes for viscous droplets in airflow

Abstract

Droplet breakup is important in many natural and industrial processes, but the current classification of breakup regimes, especially the intermediate breakup regime, is ambiguous. In this study, the transitions of breakup regimes for viscous droplets are investigated experimentally using high-speed imaging taken from a side view and a 45° view. Based on the morphology change in the middle of the droplet, the breakup regimes are classified into no-breakup, bag breakup, bag-stamen, low-order multimode, high-order multimode, and shear-stripping breakup. The droplet morphologies in different regimes and the corresponding transitions are discussed in detail. The droplet viscosity dissipates the kinetic energy transferred by the airflow during the initial droplet flattening, and affects the development of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability wave after the flattening. Through the analysis of the droplet deformation and the Rayleigh–Taylor instability with the droplet viscosity taken into account, the transition conditions of different regimes are obtained in a regime map. By further considering the relative velocity loss between the droplet and the airflow, the ranges of the dual-bag breakup in the low-order multimode regime and the droplet retraction in the bag-stamen regime are determined.