Ligament-mediated spray formation.

The spray formed when a fast gas stream blows over a liquid volume presents a wide distribution of fragment sizes. The process involves a succession of changes of the liquid topology, the last being the elongation and capillary breakup of ligaments torn off from the liquid surface. The coalescence of the liquid volumes constitutive of a ligament at the very moment it detaches from the liquid bulk produces larger drops. This aggregation process has its counterpart on the shape of the size distribution associated with the ligament breakup, found to be very well represented by gamma distributions. The exponential shape of the overall distribution in the spray coincides with the large excursion wing of these elementary distributions, underlying the crucial role played by the ligament dynamics in building up the broad statistics of sprays.