THE ELECTROSTATIC SPRAY EMITTED FROM AN ELECTRIFIED CONICAL MENISCUS

The electrostatic spray emitted from an electrified almost conical men iscus is analyzed in this work by means of a Lagrangian model using pa rticle dynamics. Instead of solving the classical Poisson problem for the spray, we follow each one of the emitted particles and their mutua l electrostatic interaction. The spray is shown to be dilute, allowing for essential simplifications on the particle aerodynamics. Computer simulations yield as many detailed spatial and statistical characteriz ations of the spray as one needs once the model is validated by actual experiments using laser-doppler anemometry and particle size analyzer s also presented here. The experiments show that the theoretical model can predict not only the mean, but also the RMS of desired quantities such as droplet velocity and size at a certain point.