Liquid drop acceleration and deformation

Lateral deformation and breakup are known to occur when a liquid drop is subjected to rapid acceleration by an air stream. The present paper analyzes the dynamics of a liquid drop in the absence of breakup, and the time scales of the dynamics are shown to be slightly different than those used in empirical correlation. A simplified theory for liquid drop acceleration and deformation is developed and compared to the data reported by Reinecke and McKay (1969). It is shown that the displacement increases as the fourth power of the nondimensional time parameter at early time and as the first power of that parameter at late time. It is concluded that no single power law can correlate all of the data, although they may be good approximations over narrow ranges of the nondimensional time parameter.