The mechanisms of droplet formation that take place during vibration-induced drop atomization are investigated experimentally. Droplet ejection results from the breakup of transient liquid spikes that form following the localized collapse of free-surface waves. Breakup typically begins with capillary pinch-off of a droplet from the tip of the spike and can be followed by additional pinch-offs of satellite droplets if the corresponding capillary number is sufficiently small (e.g., in low-viscosity liquids). If the capillary number is increased (e.g., in viscous liquids), breakup first occurs near the base of the spike, with or without subsequent breakup of the detached, thread-like spike. The formation of these detached threads is governed by a breakup mechanism that is separated from the tip-dominated capillary pinch-off mechanism by an order of magnitude in terms of dimensionless driving frequency
f*. The dependence of breakup time and unbroken spike length on fluid and driving parameters is established over a broad range of dimensionless driving frequencies
(10−3<f*<1). It is also shown that the droplet-ejection acceleration threshold
c of low-viscosity liquids depends on the dimensionless drop diameter
. Moreover, in the limit
≥ 20, the droplet-ejection threshold becomes independent of
(c ≈ 4). This limit state is described by a scaling equivalent to that of
Goodridge, Shi, and Lathrop [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1824 (1996)
] derived for the onset of droplet ejection from Faraday waves. It is shown in the present study that the acceleration threshold in this limit scales like
ac ∼ f4/3(σ/ρ)1/3.
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