Water spring: a model for bouncing drops

Ko Okumura (1, 2) , Frédéric Chevy (1) , Denis Richard (1) , David Quéré (1) , Christophe Clanet (3)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée
2 Department of Physics
3 IRPHE - Institut de Recherche sur les Phénomènes Hors Equilibre

It has been shown that a water drop can bounce persistently, when thrown on a super-hydrophobic substrate. We present here scaling arguments which allow us to predict the maximal deformation and the contact time of the drop. This approach is completed by a model describing the flow inside the drop, and by original experimental data.

Ko Okumura, Frédéric Chevy, Denis Richard, David Quéré, Christophe Clanet. Water spring: a model for bouncing drops. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 2003, 62, n° 2, pp.237 - 243. ⟨10.1209/epl/i2003-00340-1⟩. ⟨hal-00014836⟩