Crossover of Varicose and Whipping Instabilities in Electrified Microjets

W. Yang, H. Duan, C. Li, and W. Deng

Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 054501 – Published 5 February 2014

Abstract

In electrified liquid jets, varicose instability leads to jet breakup into droplets while whipping instability is responsible for jet stretching. We show that the coupling and relative importance of these two instabilities dictates the outcome for jet breakup. The codevelopment of transverse and radial perturbations lead to remarkable breakup modes linked to initial perturbation magnitude, perturbation wave numbers, and jet charge levels.