DROPLET STREAM DYNAMICS AT HIGH AMBIENT-PRESSURE

The wake of a leading droplet can influence a trailing droplet's behav ior by altering the environment through which the trailing droplet tra vels. A high-ambient-pressure environment not only changes the result of arty collisions by adding a strong shearing element, bat the increa se in aerodynamic forces also alters the droplet wake. Despite these e ffects, this work shows experimentally that classical small-perturbati on theory for a cylindrical jet breakup into droplets holds over the r ange of ambient pressure from I to 70 atm. Further, the length of the stable droplet stream is controlled by droplet wake interactions and a droplet's ability to resist the inertial and shearing influences of t he ambient gas. Secondary breakup transitions at high ambient pressure s do not match those observed in isolated-droplet experiments. Collisi ons with satellite droplets at elevated pressures enhances deformation breakup significantly. interestingly, shear shipping in a stream of d roplets occurs in the Reynolds and Weber number regime associated with droplet deformation breakup irt the isolated-droplet case. This rapid stripping phenomena may also be a result of wake interactions.