Viscoelasticity breaks the symmetry of impacting jets.

A jet of a Newtonian liquid impacting on a wall at right angle spreads as a thin liquid sheet which preserves the radial symmetry of the jet. We report that for a viscoelastic jet (solution of polyethylene glycol in water) this symmetry can break; close to the wall, the jet cross section becomes faceted and radial steady liquid films (wings) form, which connect the cross-section vertices to the sheet. The number of wings increases with increasing the viscoelastic relaxation time of the solution, but also with increasing jet velocity and decreasing distance from the jet nozzle to the wall. We propose a mechanism for this surprising destabilization of the jet shape, which develops perpendicularly to the direction expected for a buckling mechanism, and explain these dependencies. We also discuss the large-scale consequences of the jet destabilization on the sheet spreading and fragmentation, which show through the faceting of hydraulic jumps and of suspended (Savart) sheets.