View article

This paper reports a temporal instability analysis of a moving thin viscous liquid sheet in an inviscid gas medium. The results show that surface tension always opposes, while surrounding gas and relative velocity between the sheet and gas favour, the onset and development of instability. It is found that there exist two modes of instability for viscous liquid sheets – aerodynamic and viscosity-enhanced instability – in contrast to inviscid liquid sheets for which the only mode of instability is aerodynamic. It is also found that axisymmetrical disturbances control the instability process for small Weber numbers, while antisymmetrical disturbances dominate for large Weber numbers. For antisymmetrical disturbances, liquid viscosity, through the Ohnesorge number, enhances instability at small Weber numbers, while liquid viscosity reduces the growth rate and the dominant wavenumber at large Weber numbers. At the …