THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
THIN-SHEET CREATION AND THRESHOLD PRESSURES IN DROP SPLASHING
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
BY
ANDRZEJ LATKA
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
DECEMBER 2016
Copyright
c
2016 by Andrzej Latka
All Rights Reserved
To my mother, Maria Latka: I owe nobody more.
To my father, Miroslaw Latka: my role model for physics and life.
To my sister, Agnieszka Latka: my first and closest friend.
To my grandmother, Maria Latka: the strongest person I have ever known.
To my grandfather, Henryk Latka: for showing me how to be a man.
To my grandmother, Anna Lorenz: for the memories carried by the smell of the best apple
pie in the world.
To my grandfather, Roman Lorenz: for teaching me the importance of history.
To Nicholas Minutillo and his family: for becoming my American family.
To Michal Niewiara, a brother.
To Ryszard Chytrowski: for everything.
With all my love to Agnieszka Wergieluk: for making me a better physicist than I would
have been and for making me a happier person than I ever thought I could be.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3 TIME OF THIN-SHEET CREATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4 THRESHOLD VELOCITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
iv
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Images of a splashing drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1 Time of thin-sheet creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Interference imaging of sheet creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3 Drop shape at time of thin-sheet creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4 Diagram of drop impact outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.5 Threshold pressures of small-r
∗
and large-r
∗
sheets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1 Plot of u
sheet
and u
stop
vs. pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2 Effect of changing the ambient gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3 Threshold velocity u
stop
vs. liquid viscosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.4 Threshold velocity u
stop
vs. impact velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
v