Breakup dynamics of toroidal droplets in shear-thinning fluids

We use toroidal droplets to study the breakup dynamics of a Newtonian liquid jet in the presence of rheologically nonlinear materials. We find that the droplets resist breakup for times that are longer than those in the presence of Newtonian liquids. More importantly, we show that our experiments can be explained by incorporating the nonlinearities into the linear treatment of the problem through the strain-rate-dependent viscosity. Finally, we show that the scaling factor required to relate the viscosity to the growth rate associated to unstable modes is given by the elastic modulus of the outside material, illustrating that both the viscoelastic and shear-thinning nature of the outside material play a crucial role in the dynamics of the problem.