A note on spark bubble drop-on-demand droplet generation: simulation and experiment

The fluid dynamics of the spark bubble-generated droplet is studied both experimentally and numerically. The emphasis is especially on the droplet behavior after pinch-off. Commercial inkjet printers often produce satellite droplets along with parent droplets which are not desirable from the viewpoint of printing efficiency. Furthermore, standard drop-on-demand droplet generators are normally restricted to the generation of droplets with the same size as the nozzle diameter. In the spark bubble droplet generation method, a spark-generated bubble induces droplet formation through a hole in a solid surface separating the liquid and air interfaces. Immediately after ignition occurs, a bubble forms and creates pressure waves as it expands and contracts in a nonsymmetrical fashion. These pressure waves, depending on the geometries of the bubble location, plate, and hole may cause a single droplet smaller than the plate aperture to form and break up. In this article, a combined numerical and experimental study has been conducted to investigate the droplet behavior created in this manner. A high-speed camera is utilized to capture the droplet formation process. The numerical simulations have been carried out using the boundary integral spatial solution coupled with the time integration, i.e., a mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. There is reasonable agreement between the simulations and experiment.