Analysis of the Instability of Evaporating Charged Liquid Drops

The Rayleigh stability limit for charged liquid droplets was recently analyzed by Roth and Kelly for a multisibling breakup based upon the condition of system energy balance. In the present study a further mathematical model for a single-sibling disintegration has been developed to predict the final state for a given drop charged to the Rayleigh limit with known surface tension and initial size. The model involves scanning all possible radii of the sibling droplets and ensuring that the solutions satisfy conservation-of-energy and Rayleigh-limit criteria. Values obtained with the further condition of minimum final energy state show very good agreement with the experimental observations of Abbas and Latham.