A drop impacting on a solid surface must push away the intervening gas layer before making contact. This entails a large lubricating air pressure which can deform the bottom of the drop, thus entrapping a bubble under its centre. For a millimetric water drop, the viscous-dominated flow in the thin air layer counteracts the inertia of the drop liquid. For highly viscous drops the viscous stresses within the liquid also affect the interplay between the drop and the gas. Here the drop also forms a central dimple, but its outer edge is surrounded by an extended thin air film, without contacting the solid. This is in sharp contrast with impacts of lower-viscosity drops where a kink in the drop surface forms at the edge of the central disc and makes a circular contact with the solid. Larger drop viscosities make the central air dimple thinner. The thin outer air film subsequently ruptures at numerous random locations around the periphery, when it reaches below 150 nm thickness. This thickness we measure using high-speed two-colour interferometry. The wetted circular contacts expand rapidly, at orders of magnitude larger velocities than would be predicted by a capillary–viscous balance. The spreading velocity of the wetting spots is ${\sim}0.4~\text{m}~\text{s}^{-1}$ independent of the liquid viscosity. This may suggest enhanced slip of the contact line, assisted by rarefied-gas effects, or van der Waals forces in what we call extreme wetting. Myriads of micro-bubbles are captured between the local wetting spots.

A liquid drop impacting onto a soft solid will entrap more air in the central air disc than an equivalent drop impacting onto a rigid surface.

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We study the impact of drops onto a flat surface with a nano-particle-based superhydrophobic coating, focusing on the earliest contact using 200 ns time-resolution. A central air-disc is entrapped when the drop impacts the surface, and when the roughness is appropriately accounted for, the height and radial extent of the air-disc follow the scaling laws established for impacts onto smooth surfaces. The roughness also modifies the first contact of the drop around the central air-disc, producing a thick band of micro-bubbles. The initial bubbles within this band coalesce and grow in size. We also infer the presence of an air-film residing inside the microstructure, at radial distances outside the central air-disc. This is manifest by the sudden appearance of microbubbles within a few microseconds after impact. The central air-disc remains pinned on the roughness, unless it is chemically altered to make it superhydrophilic.

We present the results of 3D velocity measurements of the flow fields around a free-flying painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) and a tethered mechanical flapper using Synthetic Aperture PIV (SAPIV). The velocity fields presented for the free-flying butterfly have limited spatial resolution; however, leading edge vortices (LEV) and trailing edge vortices (TEV) can be seen during the downstroke of the butterfly. The results show that SAPIV has potential as a flow analysis tool to obtain whole-field, time-resolved velocities surrounding freely flying insects. The results of a tethered mechanical flapper focus mainly on the LEV and TEV through an entire flapping cycle. The results are compared to velocity measurements taken using traditional PIV techniques. Additionally, force measurements of the lift and thrust generated by the mechanical flapper are compared with the calculated forces from the measured velocity data and circulation in the flow field. The reconstructed visual hull of the butterfly and mechanical flapper is also discussed.