This research presents an experimental study of the formation of drops of suspensions consisting of a viscous liquid and spherical, neutrally buoyant, noncolloidal particles. Pendant drop formation and low Reynolds number jetting of suspensions are investigated, as is the transition between the two. Throughout, the particles utilized are on the order of 100 μm and the orifice from which the drops are formed is on the order of 1 mm. The presence of the particulate phase causes the structure at pinch-off in the pendant drop regime to change noticeably from that of pure liquids. Thick cone-like structures, termed "spindles" here, form at either end of the slender thread and are the result of particle motions during necking. These spindles become more pronounced with increasing particle concentration. Depending on particle concentration, the particles can have either a destabilizing effect (low concentration) on drop formation or a stabilizing one (high concentration). At low concentrations, the particles lead to earlier rupture of the thread and much shorter jet lengths, while at elevated concentrations the particles stabilize the thread after rupture and lead to fewer satellite drops as well as induce jetting at lower flower rates. A two-stage model has been proposed to describe the necking process for particle-laden suspensions in the pendant drop regime. The first stage occurs when the thread is thick relative to the particles and the effect of the particles can be attributed solely to a change in the effective viscosity of the mixture. The second stage occurs nearer pinch-off when the thread has thinned to only a few particle diameters. In this stage the individual particle motions within the thread determine the behavior and the thread ultimately ruptures over a region of the thread devoid of particles.

An imaging system was developed to visualize Drop-on-Demand (DOD) inkjet drop formation and impaction on substrate over drop sizes and impaction speeds of the magnitudes encountered in applications of inkjet printing. Using a pulsed laser, a low-speed charge-coupled-device (CCD) camera, and signal generators, the imaging system based on flash photography was used to capture sharp images with a temporal resolution of 200 ns and a spatial resolution of 0.81 micron/pixel. First, the dynamics of DOD drop formation was studied experimentally. The effects of the driving signal, which controls the piezoelectric transducer that produces the pressure pulse to drive the liquid from the reservoir through the orifice, have been examined along with those of liquid properties. The main stages of DOD drop formation, including ejection and stretching of liquid, pinch-off of liquid thread from the nozzle exit, contraction of liquid thread, breakup of liquid thread into primary drop and satellites, and recombination of primary drop and satellites, are analyzed. A necessary condition for the recombination of the primary drop and satellite and the limit for liquid thread length without breakup during contraction are proposed. Second, using the visualization system coupled with a motorized stage, micron-drop impaction on a smooth substrate was investigated over a regime of We and Oh typical for inkjet printing applications. The results indicate that scaling of micron-drop impaction from millimeter-drop impaction, based on dimensionless numbers (Oh, We and cos ), is valid. The predictions of maximum spreading ratio by six existing models agree well with experimental values for high-We impaction, but not for low-We and low-contact-angle impactions; however, the model of Park et al. predicts well for high- and low-We impaction due to its inclusion of spontaneous spreading dissipation. Fingering and splashing do not occur in the micron drop impaction on either dry solid substrates or a pre-existing liquid layer. The drying time of a micron drop deposited on a substrate is less than one second and increases as the contact angle of the drop on the substrate increases.

The research discussed in this dissertation was conducted to understand drop formation of inkjet printing with inks containing polymer. Solutions containing a water soluble polymer, poly ethylene oxide (PEO), with different molecular weights and polydispersities were used as inks. A flash photographic technique was used to visualize the whole process of DOD drop formation of dilute polymer solutions. The effects of driving signal, frequency and liquid properties on drop speed, drop size, breakup time and the formation of satellites were studied in detail. The addition of PEO increases the shear viscosity at all molecular weights, but the change is small for dilute solutions. However, the addition of a small amount of PEO can have a significant effect on the DOD drop formation process, increasing breakup time, decreasing primary drop speed and decreasing the number of satellites in some cases. The effects depend on both molecular weight and concentration. At lower molecular weights (14k and 35k g/mol), the effect of PEO was small when the drop formation process for the dilute solution was compared with that of a Newtonian liquid having similar shear viscosity, and the effect of PEO was small even at concentrations large enough that the solution does not fall in the dilute regime. As molecular weight is increased, the effects of PEO on DOD drop formation increase significantly, and the effects of concentration become important. These effects are explained by the fluid elasticity which increases with increasing in molecular weight and concentration. When the liquid jets out of the nozzle, the polymer chains are stretched, and thus depart from their ideal coiled state. As a result, an elastic stress develops in the liquid column and resists capillarity-driven pinch off from the nozzle and is responsible for the decrease in drop speed and longer breakup time. DOD drop formation data were shown to correlate closely with effective relaxation time, proposed by Tirtaatmadja based on Rouse-Zimm theory. When driving voltage amplitude is 44.2 V, two important parameters (breakup time and primary drop speed) in DOD drop formation for solutions containing monodispersed PEO and aqueous solutions containing mixtures of monodispersed PEO were closely predicted by correlation equations involving effective relaxation time . A mixture rule was developed to calculate the relaxation time for mixtures of monodispersed PEO. However, for polydispersed PEO, effective relaxation time was based on viscous molecular weight since the molecular weight distributions of the polydispersed PEO were unknown. When breakup time was plotted versus effective relaxation time for 1000k g/mol PEO, the data did not lie on the same line as that for the 100k and 300k g/mol PEO. This is believed to be due to the molecular weight distributions of the polydispersed PEO. When more than one species are present, viscous average molecular weight does not adequately account for the long chain species making up the polymer sample. DOD drop formation dynamics is highly affected by the actuating waveform, including the driving voltage, waveform shape, and frequency. The effects of parameters (jetting frequency, voltage amplitude and the shape of waveform) characterizing the signal were investigated. The open time and first drop problem were also studied. Research in this dissertation gives a better understanding of DOD drop formation process of polymer solutions, which may lead to improvement of inkjet printing quality for a variety of industry inks and polymer micro scale deposition and patterning in large areas.

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Video files found in Chapter 5. : AUTOMATED OBJECT TRACKING, EVENT DETECTION AND RECOGNITION FOR HIGH-SPEED VIDEO OF DROP FORMATION PHENOMENA.<div><br></div><div>Video files found in APPENDIX E. CHAPTER 5, RESOURCE 2.</div>