Phenomena

Instabilities in Competition

A research poster showing two colliding liquid jets.

When two liquid jets collide, they form a thin liquid sheet with a thicker rim. That rim breaks into threads and then droplets, forming a well-known fishbone pattern as the Plateau-Rayleigh instability breaks up the flow. This poster shows a twist on that set-up: here, the two colliding jets vary slightly in their velocities. That variability adds a second instability to the system, visible as the wavy pattern on the central liquid sheet. The sheet’s rim still breaks apart in the usual fishbone pattern, but the growing waves in the center of the sheet eventually that structure apart as well. (Image credit: S. Dighe et al.)

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