4. Effects of turbulence

When velocity gradients are high, the scales of Kelvin-Helmoltz-type aerodynamic instabilities are relatively small and condition the atomization regime, while turbulence scales are larger. At lower velocities, turbulence scales can become smaller than the wavelengths of the instabilities and cause sufficient surface deformation to result in the detachment of relatively large fragments corresponding to the characteristic turbulence scales.

A first approach is to evaluate the vortex energy, which must be equal to the surface tension energy for rupture to occur. This equality of orders of magnitude can be written as follows: