Mathematics of curved liquid jets and how not to do it

Abstract:

Curved liquid jets appear in a large number of applications, ranging from spinning disc atomisation and prilling to the manufacturing of glass threads and nanofibers. Although, the dynamics of such jets is conceptually absolutely straightforward, mathematically, the corresponding problem appears to be rather intricate as one has to deal with a jet-specific curvilinear non-orthogonal coordinate system which has to be determined simultaneously with finding the flow parameters. As it happened, the entire research effort in this area in the past 17 years has largely been wasted as a result of some basic misconceptions introduced in early publications which then propagated from paper to paper and from one research group to another. This, largely educational, talk aims to give a correct and completely transparent mathematical description of the flow as well as a user-friendly guide to published work allowing one to identify typical errors in different guises without doing, in this problem very laborious, calculations.

Yulii D. Shikhmurzaev is professor of applied mathematics at the University of Birmingham School of Mathematics.

Date: January 23, 2018, 10-11 a.m.
Venue: L2|06