Satellite formation in drop-on-demand printing of polymer solutions

TL;DRAbstract

High speed photographic images of jets formed from dilute solutions of polystyrene in diethyl phthalate ejected from a piezoelectric drop-on-demand inkjet head have been analyzed in order to study the formation and distribution of drops as the ligament collapses. Particular attention has been paid to satellite drops, and their relative separation and sizes. The effect of polymer concentration was investigated.The distribution of nearest-neighbour centre spacing between the drops formed from the ligament is better described by a 2-parameter modified gamma distribution than by a Gaussian distribution.There are (at least) two different populations of satellite size relative to the main drop size formed at normal jetting velocities, with ratios of about three between the diameters of the main drop and the successive satellite sizes. The distribution of the differences in drop size between neighbouring drops is close to Gaussian, with a small non-zero mean for low polymer concentrations, wh

Chat with Paper

AI Agents for this Paper