An experimental technique to produce micrometer waves on a cylindrical sub-millimeter free surface

Abstract

We propose and validate an experimental method to analyze the propagation of micrometer surface waves over a liquid column held between two rods, 100 μm in radius. One of the rods vibrates at frequencies of the order of several kHz, while the other remains still. Surface waves, very few microns in amplitude, travel from the oscillating rod to the opposite end. They are almost damped by viscous stresses before reaching that end. We use a super-resolution image processing technique to measure the spatial decay of those waves down to the submicrometer scale. The results are validated from comparison with the numerical solution of the full Navier–Stokes equations.

Stability of a liquid bridge under vibration

“…In fact, such experiments have already been conducted in Refs. [18,23]-but, unfortunately, its authors were interested in issues other than stability.…”