Capillary jetting of a fluid dispersed into another immiscible phase is
usually limited by a critical Capillary number, a function of the Reynolds
number and the fluid properties ratios. Critical conditions are set when the
minimum spreading velocity of small perturbations v−∗ along the jet
(marginal stability velocity) is zero. Here we identify and describe
parametrical regions of high technological relevance, where v−∗>0 and the
jet flow is always supercritical independently of the dispersed liquid flow
rate: within these relatively broad regions, the jet does not undergo the usual
dripping-jetting transition, so that either the jet can be made arbitrarily
thin (yielding droplets of any imaginably small size), or the issued flow rate
can be made arbitrarily small. In this work, we provide illustrative analytical
studies of asymptotic cases for both negligible and dominant inertia forces. In
this latter case, requiring a non-zero jet surface velocity, axisymmetric
perturbation waves ``surf'' downstream for all given wave numbers while the
liquid bulk can remain static. In the former case (implying small Reynolds
flow) we found that the jet profile small slope is limited by a critical value;
different published experiments support our predictions.Comment: Submitted first (24-August-2008) to Physics of Fluids, withdrawn from
that journal on 6-April-2008, and submitted to Physical Review E the same da