Playing with Emulsion Formulation to Control the Perforation of a Freely Expanding Liquid Sheet.

A single-drop experiment based on the collision of one drop of liquid on a small solid target is used to produce liquid sheets that are visualized with a fast camera. Upon impact, the drop flattens into a sheet that is bounded by a thicker rim and radially expanding in air. Emulsion-based liquid sheets are destabilized through the nucleation of holes that perforate the sheet during its expansion.

Bursting of Dilute Emulsion-Based Liquid Sheets Driven by a Marangoni Effect.

We study the destabilization mechanism of thin liquid sheets expanding in air and show that dilute oil-in-water emulsion-based sheets disintegrate through the nucleation and growth of holes that perforate the sheet. The velocity and thickness fields of the sheet outside the holes are not perturbed by holes, and hole opening follows the Taylor-Culick law. We find that a prehole, which widens and thins out the sheet with time, systematically precedes the hole nucleation.