Talk:Splash (fluid mechanics)

A) The first sentence of the article is reducing and angled : splash studies have never been reduced to solid-on-liquid shocks. Splash also occurs with liquid-on-liquid shocks (milk on water, rain on sea surface, ...). Today, a lot of research on splash deals with the liquid-on-solid case (ink-jet printers, surface coating, soil erosion, aeronautics).

B) not only the Reynolds number and the Weber number import in splash, but also (although secondarily) the Froude number.

C) A general page on splash should refer to the pionneer work of Worthington prior to any other researcher

D) The first photography of a milkdrop corona was released to the public in Worthington's 1908 book, decades before Edgerton. readable in google books at http://books.google.com/books?id=HSOYP-G4Pn4C&pg=PR5&dq=Worthington+A+M+1908+A+Study+of+Splashes&hl=fr&ei=498hTc_vNoGx8gP5uvCPBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

I suggest to define splash as follows:

In fluid mechanics, splash is the projection of droplets of fluid that result from a shock between a moving object (most often a sphere, either liquid or solid) and a steady surface (either liquid or solid). This general definition splits in separate studies according to which of the object, or the surface, or even both, is liquid and produces the droplets.

The English physics professor A. M. Worthington pionnered the research on splash in the early 1890's. For practical reasons, Worthington firstly studied splash caused by mercury drops falling on a glass plate. Years after he started his work, the emerging photographic technology was able produce emulsions sensitive enough, and poweful enough strobes, to allow him to photograph this brief, and formerly unknown, wonder of nature. He could also extend his studies to other cases, including the liquid-on-liquid case, hence creating the first image of a milkdrop coronet. He released these images in his famous 1908's book.

Among the huge number of studies of splash are the following examples: rain on water, rain on soil, ink on paper (for inkjet printing), coating drops on surface, ... Finally, splash studies have included the granular case (an iron ball falling in a sand box), and even the meteor case, since the surface of the impacted planet may follow the fluid mechanics when the meteor is massive enough.

147.99.18.146 (talk) 14:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)Olivier Planchon, IRD.