Physics Commons^™

Entry Of A Sphere Into A Water-Surfactant Mixture And The Effect Of A Bubble Layer, Nathan B. Spiers, Mohammad M. Mansoor, Randy Craig Hurd, Saberul I. Sharker, W. G. Robinson, B. J. Williams, Tadd T. Truscott

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

A rigid sphere entering a liquid bath does not always produce an entrained air cavity. Previous experimental work shows that cavity formation, or the lack thereof, is governed by fluid properties, wetting properties of the sphere, and impact velocity. In this study, wetting steel spheres are dropped into a water-surfactant mixture with and without passing through a bubble layer first. Surprisingly, in the case of a water-surfactant mixture without a bubble layer, the critical velocity for cavity formation becomes radius dependent. This occurs due to dynamic surface tension effects, with the local surface tension in the splash increasing during surface …