Author(s)

Andreas Winkler¹, Paul Bergelt¹, Lars Hillemann², Siegfried Menzel¹

¹IFW Dresden, SAWLab Saxony, Dresden, Germany.
²TU Dresden, Institute for Process Engineering and Environmental Technology, Dresden, Germany.

In this work, aqueous glycerol solutions are atomized to investigate the influence of the viscosity on the droplet size and the general atomization behavior in a setup using standing surface acoustic waves (sSAW) and a fluid supply at the boundary of the acoustic path. Depending on the fluid viscosity, the produced aerosols have a monomodal or polymodal size distribution. The mean droplet size in the dominant droplet fraction, however, decreases with increasing viscosity. Our results also indicate that the local wavefield conditions are crucial for the atomization process.

Surface Acoustic Waves, Atomization, Aerosol, High Viscosity, Droplet Size Distribution, Wavefield

Winkler, A. , Bergelt, P. , Hillemann, L. and Menzel, S. (2016) Influence of Viscosity in Fluid Atomization with Surface Acoustic Waves. Open Journal of Acoustics, 6, 23-33. doi: 10.4236/oja.2016.63003.