Deformation and breakup of slender drops in linear flows

Abstract

We study the deformation and breakup of a low-viscosity slender drop in a linear flow, , which depends on the drop length and the imposed flow. Our predictions are in reasonable agreement with the recent experimental data of Bentley (1985) for general two-dimensional linear flows and those of Grace (1971) for simple shear and hyperbolic extensional flow. We also present calculations for a class of three-dimensional flows as an illustration of the behaviour of three-dimensional flows in general.