Modes in flow focusing and instability of coaxial liquid–gas jets

Abstract

Six flow modes are distinguished in the flow-focusing experiments of a liquid jet forced by a high-speed air stream. The domains of the modes are identified on the parameter space of the liquid flow rate Q l and the gas pressure drop Δ p g . The disturbance wavelength λ and breakup length L of the jet are also measured. A theoretical model considering axisymmetric disturbances is proposed, and a basic velocity profile of hyperbolic-tangent function is utilized. The linear temporal and spatio-temporal instability analyses are carried out using the Chebyshev collocation method. The effects of the flow parameters and the velocity profile on the flow instability are discussed. The temporal instability analysis demonstrates that the interfacial shear causes the instability of short waves and retards the instability of long waves. Moreover, the spatio-temporal instability analysis gives the transition boundary between the absolute and convective instability (AI/CI). The most unstable wavelength predicted by the temporal instability analysis and the AI/CI boundary predicted by the spatio-temporal instability analysis are in good agreement with the experimental results.