Diagnostics for liquid dispersion due to a high-speed impact with accident or vulnerability assessment application

The high-speed impact and subsequent dispersion of a large liquid slug is of interest for assessing vulnerability of structures when subjected to such an event. The Weber number associated with such liquid impacts is generally between 105 and 108. Because of the experiment scale and destructive nature of these high-energy impacts, most traditional diagnostics are difficult to implement. Therefore, unique diagnostics were employed in several tests to gather information on impact force, spreading instability, slug break-up, ejection velocity, droplet deformation and spray characteristics. Measurement techniques discussed here include high-speed photometrics, particle image velocimetry (PIV), TrackEye particle analysis, speckle correlation, single-pass schlieren imaging, phase Doppler particle analyzer (PDPA) and load cell measurements as applied to large-scale, high-speed liquid impacts.