Bursting of Dilute Emulsion-Based Liquid Sheets Driven by a Marangoni Effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dilute emulsion-based liquid sheets destabilize and disintegrate via hole nucleation driven by Marangoni stresses, revealing the underlying dynamics and confirming them through experiments.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Marangoni effects cause hole nucleation and growth in dilute emulsion sheets, providing a quantitative understanding of the destabilization mechanism.

Findings

Pre-hole formation precedes hole nucleation.

Hole growth follows Taylor-Culick law.

Marangoni stresses drive the spreading and thinning of the pre-hole.

Abstract

We study the destabilization mechanism of thin liquid sheets expanding in air and show that dilute oil-in-water emulsion-based sheets disintegrate through the nucleation and growth of holes that perforate the sheet. The velocity and thickness fields of the sheet outside the holes are not perturbed by holes and hole opening follows a Taylor-Culick law. We find that a pre-hole, which widens and thins out the sheet with time, systematically precedes the hole nucleation. The growth dynamics of the pre-hole follows the law theoretically predicted for a liquid spreading on another liquid of higher surface tension due to Marangoni stresses. Classical Marangoni spreading experiments quantitatively corroborate our findings.