A modelling framework for jet penetration into soft gels

Abstract

Jet penetration into soft gels is essential for optimising fluid delivery in medical therapies, biomedical engineering, and soft robotics. In this work, we visualise the jet flow of a Newtonian fluid into a soft viscoplastic gel using camera imaging and time-resolved tomographic particle image velocimetry (PIV) systems. The flow is primarily governed by the Reynolds number ( $Re = 350-5000$ ) and the effective viscosity ratio ( $m$ up to 22). We observe three flow regimes – mixing, jellyfish, and fingering – with transitions between them quantified in the $Re-m$ plane. An experimentally informed, systematic, practical, semi-analytical modelling framework is developed to estimate jet penetration depth over time, incorporating PIV results and an approximate functional decomposition approach to describe the velocity distribution and Reynolds stress contributions. The model provides reasonable estimations across all three regimes.