Jason Ford

Droplet insight could help to eliminate bubble formation

News

For the first time, scientists witnessed the details of the full, ultrafast process of liquid droplets evolving into a bubble when they strike a surface.

It is claimed that the research could help eliminate bubbles formed during spray coating, metal casting and ink-jet printing. It also could impact studies on fuel efficiency and engine life by understanding the splashing caused by fuel hitting engine walls.

‘How liquid coalesces into a drop or breaks up into a splash when hitting something solid is a fundamental problem in the study of fluid dynamics,’ said Jung Ho Je, one of the lead authors of ‘How Does an Air Film Evolve into a Bubble During Drop Impact?’, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, and a physicist at Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea.

A team of Korean and US scientists used the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to profile the film of air that gets trapped between a droplet and a surface and to study how it evolves into a bubble.

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