On the breakup of fluid particles in turbulent flows

Dynamics of bubble and drop breakup in turbulent flows have been studied in detail, using a high-speed CCD camera. Analysis of breakup times, deformations, deformation velocities, number of fragments, and the resulting daughter size distributions show that there are several important differences in the breakup mechanism of bubbles and drops. It is shown that the increase in interfacial energy prior to breakup exceeds the increase after breakup. The use of an activation barrier that better describes the turbulent structures that can interact with fluid particles and also cause breakup is proposed. Measurements under identical hydrodynamic conditions reveal that an internal flow redistribution mechanism is responsible for generation of unequal-sized bubble fragments. Due to the three orders of magnitude higher density of liquids than of gases, this mechanism does not occur for drops. The measurements also show that assumption of binary breakup is reasonable for bubbles but not for drops. (c) 2006 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.