Abstract: The instability analysis of the liquid jet issuing into ambient air was conducted with an emphasis placed upon the evolution of surface waves of the jet. An experiment was designed to visualize the microscopic morphology on the surface of a liquid jet. A spectral method was proposed to measure wavelength from the obtained jet images. We also discuss key setup parameters that significantly affect the resolution of desired jet features and the accuracy of the spectral measurement. The results show that the liquid jet near the nozzle exit can be divided into a laminar section, a transition section, an instability section, and a turbulence section. Surface wave scales range from 0.06 to 0.11 times of the nozzle diameter with the atomization breakup regime. For the atomization breakup regime, the growth ratio of the surface waves of the instability section is 0.06 which is 1.5 times the value of the second wind-introduced breakup regime and 3 times the value of the first wind-introduced breakup regime.
Keywords: Breakup regime; High-speed microscopic photography; Image processing; Surface wave; Wavelength measurement.