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http://arstechnica.co m/science/2014/04/the-physics-o f-water-dro ps-and-lift-o ff/

The physics of water drops and lift-off

by Chris Lee - Apr 14 2014, 2:10am EEST

City of Raleigh NC T he f low of f luids is one of the most complex,

beautif ul, and amazing things in physics. Slow motion pictures of drops landing on water or of two f luids mixing can be simply gorgeous. Even more amazing, the basic physics of f luid f low was worked out way back in the 19th century. T hose equations, though, hold riches that are still being uncovered today. Some of the most spectacular work in recent years has involved uncovering what happens as a drop of f luid hits a surf ace. And one particularly stubborn aspectwhy do you get lif t-of f (a precursor to a splash) near the end of the impact?has revealed itself af ter a barrage of high-speed camera images.

To splash or not to splash?

At f irst, the impact of a slow-speed droplet on a surf ace seemed very dif f icult to understand. Eventually, it was decided that the momentum of the droplet competes with its surf ace tension. Essentially, the momentum tries to f orce the drop to spread out at a speed governed by the mass of f luid and the speed at which the drop impacts. But surf ace tension tries to pull the droplet back together, resisting the spreading motion. Hence, a droplet rapidly expands to some radius where the f orces balance. Note that viscosity how resistant a f luid is to f lowis seemingly unimportant. T hen something weird happens: the edges of the drop become unstable and lif t of f the surf ace. If the f luid is moving f ast enough, that lif t-of f turns into a splash. Why would lif t-of f occur? If you do the calculation, it seems that the instability causing the lif t-of f could be driven by the adhesion between the f luid and the surf ace. But that adhesion begins at the moment of impact, right? So lif t-of f , and any ensuing splash,

should occur almost instantly. Why doesn't this happen? As the drop f alls, it traps a small amount of air between it and the surf ace. T hat air compresses to a thickness of a just a f ew nanometers and races outward with the spreading drop, preventing direct contact between the surf ace and the droplet. T his should prevent lif t-of f f or slow dropletsexcept those lif t of f too. To explain this, scientists proposed that the droplet eventually outruns the air and comes in direct contact with the surf ace. But observing that proved to be very dif f icultuntil now, that is.

Imaging with TIRM

To watch a droplet hit a surf ace and detect if there is any air between the drop and surf ace, the researchers used a technique called total internal ref lection microscopy (T IRM). In an amusing demonstration of how science communication works, T IRM was invented in the labs of physicists, disappeared into the labs of biologists, and has been brought back f rom there by the f luid physics people. Apparently, optics people don't talk directly to f luid people. Imagine that you have a bit of glass that is cut into a half -disk shape. If you shine light into the half disk at the f lat side, it will be transmitted but in a slightly dif f erent direction. T his change in direction is due to the ref ractive index dif f erence between air and glass. T he light ray is bent so that it travels slightly closer to parallel with the glass surf ace. If we rotate the disk so that the light is hitting the f lat surf ace at a more glancing angle, then eventually we will f ind an angle where the light is simply ref lected. At this angle, the light exiting the glass would (if it could) travel exactly parallel to the glass surf ace. Since it can't do that, all the light is ref lected. T hat parallel beam of light is important though, because it does exist. It takes the f orm of an evanescent wave. Essentially, just at the surf ace of the glass, there is a f ield that penetrates into the air on the other side. T he evanescent wave contains an electric and magnetic f ield, just like an ordinary light wave. However, in an ordinary light wave, the electric f ield generates a magnetic f ield as it collapses and the magnetic f ield generates an electric f ield as it collapses. T his happens in such a way that the both advance through space. In an evanescent wave, none of this happens. T his is because the mutual phase relationship (the way the peaks and troughs line up with each other) between the two f ields doesn't allow it. As a result, this f ield decays with distance very f ast. By the time you are a couple of hundred nanometers f rom the surf ace, the evanescent is pretty much gone. Now I have my glass disk positioned so that the light is hitting at just the angle of total internal ref lection. If I place a drop of water on the glass disk, that increases the ref ractive index, and the light is no longer ref lected. Instead, some of it is transmitted. If I were to place a camera on the air side of the disk, I would be able to see the droplet of water, illuminated by the light f rom below. But once the droplet is gone, the image goes dark. In other words, if I were to rain droplets on the glass surf ace, I would only image those droplets that are in contact with the surf ace while not seeing any of the others. By using an imaging system like this, the researchers can selectively image droplets when they are in contact with the surf ace. It gets even better than that. Remember the evanescent wave I mentioned above? T hat acts as a distance sensor f or the microscope. Recall that the evanescent wave doesn't travel f ar is that the electric and magnetic f ields are phased such that they cannot regenerate each other. However, when they penetrate a water droplet, the phase between the two f ields is shif ted, and they start to regenerate each other again. T he amplitude of the f ield has decayed proportional to the distance between the droplet and the surf ace, so emerging light f ield has a brightness that depends on the distance between the droplet and the surf ace. T he weaker the light, the f urther away f rom the surf ace the droplet is. T hat means that our microscope doesn't just image droplets that are on the surf ace of the glass, the

brightness of the light tells us how much distance there is between the droplet and the surf ace. By a bit of caref ul calibration, air layers as thin as a f ew nanometers can be detected.

The secret lif e of a spreading droplet

So we can use this to track the expansion of a droplet and measure the thickness of the air layer between the surf ace and the droplet. Researchers combined traditional high speed photography with total internal ref lection microscopy. In this setup, the researchers are looking at the droplet f rom the point of view of the surf ace. When the droplet hits, they can, f rom the brightness of the image, f igure out how much air is between the droplet and the surf ace. And by f ilming at 180,000 f rames per second, they could observe the expansion of the droplet and the development of the instability that leads to splashing. By examining droplets with a range of impact velocities and viscosities, the researchers discovered that viscosity does play a role. T he initial impact and spreading is independent of viscosityas was f ound by earlier research. But later in the spreading process, viscosity starts to become more and more important. It seems that viscosity is one of the drivers f or the lif t-of f instability. T his dependence can be seen in two things. First, the f luid never outruns the air, and the lif t-of f instability is not due to contact with the impact surf ace. Second, despite the speed of spreading being independent of viscosity, the time between impact and lif t-of f is dependent on viscosity. So, what happens? It seems that as the droplet spreads out, the leading edge is shaped a bit like a wedge (or cusp), the sharp end of which is pointing towards the surf ace. T he cusp of the wedge is moving f aster than the top, so f luid runs out along the surf ace, eventually rounding itself out into a smooth curve. T his curve then lif ts of f the surf ace as if it were the end of a whip. (Sadly, I couldn't tell f rom the paper exactly how that happens.) T he f inding, however, is very important. From ink jet printers to internal combustion engines, we rely on f luid mechanics. Future improvements to these technologies (especially printer technologies) rely on this sort of research. Physical Review Letters, 2014, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.134501