Measurement of surface tension with free-falling oscillating molten metal droplets: a numerical and experimental investigation

Rayleigh’s equation has been widely used to determine surface tension from oscillating droplets. In this study, the use of a drop-on-demand droplet generator is proposed to create free-falling, oscillating, molten metal droplets for this purpose. To examine the applicability of the droplet generator, extensive numerical simulations in three and two-dimensions were performed. The effect of gravity, initial velocity and initial deformation on the frequency and pattern of the droplet oscillation was investigated. The use of this generator enables the creation of thousands of droplets in the course of a single experiment and the droplets have a much shorter exposure time to possible unwanted contaminations, due to a rapid measurement principle. Furthermore, the adjustable nozzle size of the generator provides flexibility in terms of droplet size, which affects the range of validity of Rayleigh’s method. To validate the method, the surface tension of molten copper in an argon atmosphere was determined over a temperature range of 1400–1620 K. The determined linear relation is expressed as σ [mN m−1] = (1307 ± 98) − (0.22 ± 0.015) (T−1356) (T in K).