Rajesh K. Bhagat | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

An experimental and numerical study of the circular hydraulic jump

This paper describes experiments and numerical simulations on the normal impact of a round liquid jet onto a horizontal surface, such as when water from a tap hits the bottom of a kitchen sink. In this case the liquid impacting on the surface spreads as a fast-flowing thin film and, at some distance from the point of impact, the thickness of the flow abruptly increases and the speed of the flow is reduced. In the experiments studied here the flow is axisymmetric about the axis of the jet, and the abrupt change in depth occurs at a given radius and is known as a circular hydraulic jump (CHJ). We present new experiments in which we measure the thickness of the liquid film inside and beyond the jump and use these measurements to estimate the governing parameters, the Weber, Froude and Reynolds numbers that determine the influence of surface tension, gravity and viscosity, respectively. We also carry out numerical simulations of the flow that show excellent agreement with the experiments and provide independent estimates of these dimensionless parameters. We find that, on the scale of a kitchen sink, and for water at high Reynolds number and low Bond number, at the jump the Weber number is of order unity while the Froude number is large, implying that the jump is controlled by surface tension. We also define a critical dimensionless jet flow rate at which this control no longer holds and gravity plays a significant role.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2021

Experimental evidence for surface tension origin of the circular hydraulic jump

For more than a century, the consensus has been that the thin-film hydraulic jump that can be seen in kitchen sinks is created by gravity. However, we recently reported that these jumps are created by surface tension, and gravity does not play a significant role. In this paper, {we present experimental data for hydraulic jump experiments conducted in a micro-gravity environment ($\approx 2\%$ of Earth's gravity) (Avedisian \& Zhao 2000; Painter et al. 2007; Phillips et al. 2008). The existence of a hydraulic jump in micro-gravity unequivocally confirms that gravity is not the principal force causing the formation of the kitchen sink hydraulic jump.} We also present thirteen sets of experimental data conducted under terrestrial gravity reported in the literature for jumps in the steady-state for a range of liquids with different physical parameters, flow rates and experimental conditions. There is good agreement with {Bhagat et al.}'s theoretical predictions. We also show that beyond a critical flow rate, $Q_C^* \propto γ^2 /νρ^2 g$, gravity does influence the hydraulic jumps. At lower flow rates, at the scale of the kitchen sink, surface tension is the dominating force. We discuss previously reported phenomenological and predictive models of hydraulic jumps and show that the phenomenological model -- effectively a statement of continuity of radial momentum across the jump -- does not allow the mechanism of the origin of the jump to be identified. However, combining the phenomenological model and {Bhagat et al.}'s theory allows us to predict the height of the jump.

physics.flu-dyn↗