Modeling of thin liquid sheet flows

The free falling liquid sheet flow is numerically solved by taking into account gravity, viscous, inertia and surface tension effects. The computed results are compared with approximate theoretical solutions based on the assumption of flat velocity profile. This last is proved to be actually recovered downstream of a distance, starting from the slit from which the fluid emanates, of about ten times the slit width. It is shown that at low Stokes numbers a jet swelling is present in the region close to the slit exit, whereas the inviscid solution is recovered also for Reynolds of order one at high Stokes values.