Electrically Charged Droplets in Microgravity

In this work, the interaction between electrically charged droplets in microgravity is considered. During the 22 s of microgravity brought by a parabolic flight, water droplets with a radius r ∈ [0.41 ? 0.97] mm were released one in front of the other. A high-speed camera allowed studying their interaction in the focal plane. The trajectories of the droplets are well adjusted by a punctual charge model. In some experiments, a physical contact between the charged droplets was observed. These collisions are studied via a phase diagram comparing the droplet Weber number, We, and the collision parameter, χ. By comparing these collisions to experiments involving neutral droplets, we deduce how the collision diagram is affected by electric charges. In particular, we show that the criterion for an impact between two droplets is no more χ < 1.