Viscous Effects on Inertial Drop Formation

The breakup of low-viscosity droplets like water is a ubiquitous and rich phenomenon. Theory predicts that in the inviscid limit one observes a finite-time singularity, giving rise to a universal power law, with a prefactor that is universal for a given density and surface tension. This universality has been proposed as a powerful tool to determine the dynamic surface tension at short time scales. We combine high-resolution experiments and simulations to show that this universality is unobservable in practice: in contrast to previous studies, we show that fluid and system parameters do play a role; notably a small amount of viscosity is sufficient to alter the breakup dynamics significantly.