Pinch-off of a viscous liquid bridge stretched with high Reynolds numbers

In this study a stretching of a viscous liquid bridge formed between two flat solid parallel substrates is investigated experimentally. The stretching of the liquid bridge is caused by the constant acceleration of one moving substrate. The geometry of the liquid bridge is observed using a high-speed video system. It is shown that at large times the radius of the liquid jet follows the dependence R similar to t(-1/2), typical of fast stretching liquid jets. The pinch-off time of the liquid bridge has been studied earlier in [1] for very viscous liquids and relatively large initial gaps between two substrates. We demonstrate that this scaling is not applicable to the case of relatively low liquid viscosity and initially thin gaps. For such cases, characterized by very high Reynolds numbers, the pinch-off time is scaled well by the capillary time.