PREDICTING DROP BREAKUP IN COMPLEX FLOWS FROM MODEL FLOW EXPERIMENTS

New experimental results describing the breakup of drops suddenly subj ected to shearing forces sufficient to cause drop breakup are presente d The experiments examine fluids which are immiscible and Newtonian un der the conditions studied: These results and of her breakup mechanism results are then discussed in the context of combining them with kine matic information on more complex flows in order to predict drop size distributions in processing flows. By analyzing the time scales of var ious breakage mechanisms studied in simple shear flow and comparing th em to the appropriate time scales in more complex flows, the relevant importance of a given mechanism in determining the daughter drop size distribution is predicted This type of time scale analysis is performe d for flow in a cavity and flow in an extruder.