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Phys. Rev. E 76, 056319 (2007) [8 pages]

Bouncing jet: A Newtonian liquid rebounding off a free surface

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Matthew Thrasher*, Sunghwan Jung, Yee Kwong Pang, Chih-Piao Chuu, and Harry L. Swinney§
Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

Received 11 July 2007; published 29 November 2007

We find that a liquid jet can bounce off a bath of the same liquid if the bath is moving horizontally with respect to the jet. Previous observations of jets rebounding off a bath (e.g., the Kaye effect) have been reported only for non-Newtonian fluids, while we observe bouncing jets in a variety of Newtonian fluids, including mineral oil poured by hand. A thin layer of air separates the bouncing jet from the bath, and the relative motion replenishes the film of air. Jets with one or two bounces are stable for a range of viscosity, jet flow rate and velocity, and bath velocity. The bouncing phenomenon exhibits hysteresis and multiple steady states.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.76.056319
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevE.76.056319
PACS:
47.15.Uv, 47.55.Ca, 47.85.mf, 47.20.Gv

*thrasher@chaos.utexas.edu

Present address: Department of Mathematics, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.

Present address: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

§swinney@chaos.utexas.edu