Surface-deformability dependent contact time of bouncing droplets on sessile soap bubbles

Hypothesis

The curvature of the free-standing liquid film is expected to modify its surface deformability, thereby affecting droplet bouncing dynamics and possibly tuning the liquid repellency performance in practical applications.

Experiments

In this study, the bouncing dynamics of water droplets on sessile soap bubbles with different curvatures has been experimentally investigated using high-speed camera.

Finds

To resist the impacting droplets, the soap bubbles is observed to show two types of deformation: the geometrical deformation caused by the total impacting force and the pressure distribution induced deformation from the droplet dynamics. The variation trend of the contact time of the droplet with the impact velocity is found to be highly dependent on the surface deformability of the soap bubble. This trend becomes non-monotonic when the soap bubble is large and more deformable. The decreasing contact time with increasing impact velocity can be well captured by a phenomenological model of coupled springs. The increasing contact time for the large soap bubbles at high impact velocities is due to the further compression of the soap bubble by the recoiling droplet, leading to the decoupling of the above two types of bubble deformation.