Giglio E, Gervais B, Rangama J, Manil B, Huber BA, Duft D, Müller R, Leisner T, Guet C. Shape deformations of surface-charged microdroplets.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys 2008;
77:036319. [PMID:
18517523 DOI:
10.1103/physreve.77.036319]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/06/2007] [Revised: 12/18/2007] [Indexed: 05/26/2023]
Abstract
We present the deformation pathway of critically charged glycol and water droplets from the onset of the Rayleigh instability and compare it to numerical results, obtained for perfectly conducting inviscid droplets. In this simple model presented here, the time evolution of the droplet shape is given by the velocity potential equation. The Laplace equation for the velocity potential is solved by expanding the potential onto harmonic functions. For the part of the pathway dominated by electrostatic pressure, the calculations reproduce the experimental data nicely, obtained for both, glycol and water microdroplets. We find that the droplet shape and in particular the tips, just before charge emission, are well fitted by a lemon shape. We stress that the tip is tangent to a cone of 39 degrees and thus significantly narrower than a Taylor cone.
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