HOLOGRAPHY EXPERIMENTS IN THE BREAKUP REGION OF A LIQUID SHEET FORMED BY TWO IMPINGING JETS

In this article an experimental study is presented of the problem of disintegration of a liquid sheet created by two impinging jets. Utilizing a novel pulse holography technique, measurements of the size and velocity of all the liquid elements around the edge of the sheet were performed. Existing theoretical predictions on the size and shape of the liquid sheet as well as on the size distribution of the droplets around the sheet boundary were also tested against the experimental measurements. For most part, the predicted shape agreed rather well with the experimental observations, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. As the impingement velocity increased, the agreement on the maximum sheet thickness deteriorated. The experiments clearly indicated that the liquid elements are largely nonspherical and that they exhibit large size variations in the neighborhood of the same location. This behavior is not predicted by the theories, which are based on the premise that the droplets at each angular position are monodispersed.