Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 27, 2025

Visualization of High Speed Liquid Jet Impaction on a Moving Surface
Published on: April 17, 2015
Stochastic Jetting and Dripping in Confined Soft Granular Flows
Michał Bogdan1, Andrea Montessori2, Adriano Tiribocchi3
1Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kasprzaka 44/52, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland.
Abstract:
We report new dynamical modes in confined soft granular flows, such as stochastic jetting and dripping, with no counterpart in continuum viscous fluids. The new modes emerge as a result of the propagation of the chaotic behavior of individual grains-here, monodisperse emulsion droplets-to the level of the entire system as the emulsion is focused into a narrow orifice by an external viscous flow. We observe avalanching dynamics and the formation of remarkably stable jets-single-file granular chains-which occasionally break, resulting in a non-Gaussian distribution of cluster sizes. We find that the sequences of droplet rearrangements that lead to the formation of such chains resemble unfolding of cancer cell clusters in narrow capillaries, overall demonstrating that microfluidic emulsion systems could serve to model various aspects of soft granular flows, including also tissue dynamics at the mesoscale.
Related Concept Videos
Free Jet
Bernoulli's Equation for Flow Along a Streamline
Steady Flow of a Fluid Stream
During this process, the momentum of the fluid within the control volume remains constant over the time interval dt. By applying the...
Steady, Laminar Flow in Circular Tubes
Capillarity in Fluid
Surface tension is crucial to capillarity. It results from cohesive forces between liquid molecules at the liquid-air boundary, forming a skin that resists external forces. When the capillary tube...
Gradually Varying Flow

