Particle motions in sheared suspensions XII. Deformation and burst of fluid drops in shear and hyperbolic flow

Abstract The deformation, orientation, and burst of fluid drops suspended in a liquid subjected to both hyperbolic and shear flow have been measured for a large number of fluid pairs covering a wide range of viscosity ratio p. At low deformation excellent agreement, with theoretical equations due to Taylor and Cerf was found. Three classes of drop behavior for large deformations in shear flow are described and are shown to depend upon p. Two of these classes lead to bursting of the drop in shear flow, and the third to an upper limit of deformation. The critical conditions of burst were shown to be in reasonable agreement with the theory. The effects of added emulsifiers and of electrostatic fields on the deformation have also been studied.