78th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (Nov 23 — 25, 2025)
P019: Stupefied Jets
When liquid interfaces confront high-speed flows, they develop striking ripples and fine droplets. In this study, a liquid jet placed coaxially at the exit of a shock tube interacts with an impulsive blast wave. The resulting transient airflow excites the interface, inducing shear driven unsteady waves and intense fragmentation. Over time, the flow decays and so does the turmoil of this stupefied jet. The interfacial waves coarsen, synonymous to the growth of length scales in decaying turbulence. Eventually, the airflow is virtually absent while the perturbed jet spreads unevenly, resembling a fishbone, influenced by pinching effects from the asymmetric geometry of the rectangular shock tube. For Jet A fuel, the illustrated interaction reach extreme conditions, with Weber numbers We ≈ 50000. Experimental details: Blast source is a high voltage copper wire explosion at the shock tube base with shock Mach number 1.7 at the tube opening. For scale reference, outer diamter of the liquid ejection tube is 8mm. The breakup event is over within ~25ms, with time being measured from the explosion.
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