Gravitational oscillations of a liquid column in a pipe

Élise Lorenceau (1) , David Quéré (1) , Jean-Yves Ollitrault (2) , Christophe Clanet (3)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée
2 IPHT - Institut de Physique Théorique - UMR CNRS 3681
3 IRPHE - Institut de Recherche sur les Phénomènes Hors Equilibre

We report gravity oscillations of a liquid column partially immersed in a bath of liquid. We stress some peculiarities of this system, namely i the fact that the mass of this oscillator constantly changes with time; ii the singular character of the beginning of the rise, for which the mass of the oscillator is zero; iii the sources of dissipation in this system, which is found to be dominated at low viscosity by the entrance or exit effects, leading to a long-range damping of the oscillations. We conclude with some qualitative descriptions of a second-order phenomenon, which is the eruption of a jet at the beginning of the rise.

Domains: Soft Condensed Matter [cond-mat.soft]; Engineering Sciences [physics]

Élise Lorenceau, David Quéré, Jean-Yves Ollitrault, Christophe Clanet. Gravitational oscillations of a liquid column in a pipe. Physics of Fluids, 2002, 14 (6), pp.1985-1992. ⟨10.1063/1.1476670⟩. ⟨hal-01123705⟩