Investigation of the mechanism of production of spray due to falling drops on the water surface in the framework of laboratory modeling of wind-wave interaction

A series of experiments was carried out on the Thermostratified Wind Wave Tank of IAP RAS, to study the processes of secondary generation of spray due to the fall of the droplets onto a rough surface. The general scheme of the experiments was similar to [1]. The range of equivalent wind speed from U₁₀ is from 21 to 34 m/s. Initially, high-speed filming with shadow visualization of the rough surface from above was performed, followed by detection, marking and calculating the number of events during image processing using special programs. It has been demonstrated that the number of phenomena of falling drops into water per unit time per unit area, leading to the formation of spray, significantly exceeds the similar values for previously studied mechanisms of spray generation: liquid ligaments fragmentation type, bubbles rupture and bag-breakup fragmentation type. Further, detailed studies of this phenomenon were carried out with a higher resolution filming. Two main scenarios of this event: with the formation of a “crown” at large angles of drop incidence, and the so-called "jet" at small angles were identified by analogy with [2]. The number droplets, size and velocity distributions were obtained for different wind speeds. These results can be used to design a spray generation function due to this phenomenon.

Investigations were supported by Russian Science Foundation project 21-19-00755 (carrying out experiments), Russian Foundation Basic Research project 21-55-52005 (data processing), work of A.A. Kandaurov was partially supported by the President's grant for young scientists МК-5503.2021.1.5.

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