Shock–free breakup of droplets. Temporal characteristics

In the present paper, we consider the shock–free breakup of droplets in their encounter with a layer (sheet) of a moving gas in the absence of pressure perturbations when the droplets are affected by a short U–shaped pulse of aerodynamic forces. Under a high pressure of the ambient gas medium $p_0$ = 20–80 bar, the droplets (ethanol or liquid oxygen) have a chance to break up after stay in a thing (2–5 mm thick) gas layer (jet) moving with a velocity of 1–10 m/sec. A distinctive feature of the process is that the characteristic time of droplet deformation and the period of natural oscillations coincide with the residence time for the droplets in the region of their interaction with the gas stream. Empirical formulas are proposed for determination of the total breakup time and the duration of the droplet disintegration stage in shock–free breakup.