Effects of surface tension and viscosity on liquid jet breakup

Zhan, Y.*; Kuwata, Yusuke*; Maruyama, Kiyotaka*; Okawa, Tomio*; Enoki, Koji*; Aoyagi, Mitsuhiro ; Takata, Takashi  

The breakup process of liquid jet was explored through visualization to develop a prediction model for liquid splash. Water, ethanol aqueous solution, and glycerin aqueous solution were used as the test liquids to explore the effects of surface tension and viscosity. Since the droplets were produced due to jet breakup, the impact frequency was zero just downstream of the nozzle and increased asymptotically with an increase in the distance from the nozzle. Thus, auxiliary correlations were developed for the minimum breakup length where the jet breakup is initiated, the maximum breakup length where the jet breakup is completed, the mean droplet size and the impact frequency. It was demonstrated that the impact frequencies calculated by the proposed model agree with the experimental data fairly well. For the application to coolant leakage in sodium-cooled fast reactors, a simple method to ensure conservative estimation of the impact frequency was also proposed.