ABSTRACT

The classical jet solution is Rayleigh’s infinite cylindrical jet. Instabilities of wavelength λ ≈ 4.5d on an infinite cylindrical column of fluid of diameter d dominate others and grow until their amplitude is high enough to cause the jet to break up into drops [1]. An engineering application of this mechanism of drop formation is the operation of a continuous inkjet printer. Briefly, these printers work by squirting a continuous jet from a tank under constant pressure, and occasionally deflecting drops on to a surface to write dot-matrix characters. Most drops are not deflected and get collected and returned to the tank.