Investigation of the stochastic collisions of drops produced by Rayleigh breakup of two laminar liquid jets

The stochastic collisions of drops of two intersecting streams were investigated experimentally. The drop streams were produced by Rayleigh breakup of two laminar jets of propanol-2 and were arranged spatially so that they lie in one plane and intersect at an angle which was varied in the experiments. The collisional interactions of the drops were visualized using video equipment. In the zone between the drop streams downstream of the intersection point new drops occur which are formed by the collisions. The visualization showed that these new drops may be produced either by the merging of two colliding drops or by the breakup of Liquid bridges formed between drops after off-center collisions. Measurements of velocity and size of the drops in the flow field were carried out using a phase-Doppler anemometer (PDA). These data and the frequency of drop arrival in the measurement control volume of the PDA give insight into the drop formation processes caused by the collisions and enable the computation of the collision frequency. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.