Supersonic Air Flow due to Solid-Liquid Impact

A solid object impacting on liquid creates a liquid jet due to the collapse of the impact cavity. Using visualization experiments with smoke particles and multiscale simulations, we show that in addition, a high-speed air jet is pushed out of the cavity. Despite an impact velocity of only 1 m/s, this air jet attains supersonic speeds already when the cavity is slightly larger than 1 mm in diameter. The structure of the air flow closely resembles that of compressible flow through a nozzle-with the key difference that here the "nozzle" is a liquid cavity shrinking rapidly in time.