Honors Theses

Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Joseph Gladden

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The rate at which fluid streams condense into droplets and separate is, in general, not linear with respect to time. Numerous Newtonian fluids have been studied and modeled, and the general form of such droplet pinches is that the radius of the narrowest portion of the stream collapses to a singularity as a function of time prior to pinch raised to a power <1. This experiment examines the case of a non-Newtonian fluid composed of various concentrations of CTAB and NaSal, to determine if the time scaling of droplet pinch varies with the concentration of the fluid and if the fluid’s elasticity affects this collapse. To investigate this, a high speed camera with a macro lens operating at 15kfps (15,000 frames per second) was positioned in front of a clear tube, over which a pipette of the solution was suspended. The fluid was then slowly released to form droplets, and the recorded images were analyzed using a computer program written by Dr. Joseph Gladden. The results show that as concentration of the micellar fluid increases, the exponent of the time scaling decreases. This shows that wormlike micellar fluids do not follow scaling trends of Newtonian fluids, and further theoretical work is needed.

Accessibility Status

Searchable text

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.