American Institute of Physics, Physics of Fluids, 12(18), p. 121511, 2006
DOI: 10.1063/1.2397015
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Air bubbles entrapped in the ink channel are a major problem in piezo-driven inkjet printing. They grow by rectified diffusion and eventually counteract the pressure buildup at the nozzle, leading to a breakdown of the jetting process. Experimental results on the droplet velocity udrop as a function of the equilibrium radius R0 of the entrained bubble are presented. Surprisingly, udrop(R0) shows a pronounced maximum around R0=17 mum before it sharply drops to zero around R0=19 mum. A simple one-dimensional model is introduced to describe this counterintuitive behavior which turns out to be a resonance effect of the entrained bubble.