When a liquid droplet impacts a hot solid surface, enough vapor may be generated under it to prevent its contact with the solid. The minimum solid temperature for this so-called Leidenfrost effect to occur is termed the Leidenfrost temperature, or the dynamic Leidenfrost temperature when the droplet velocity is non-negligible. We observe the wetting or drying and the levitation dynamics of the droplet impacting on an (isothermal) smooth sapphire surface using high-speed total internal reflection imaging, which enables us to observe the droplet base up to about 100 nm above the substrate surface. By this method we are able to reveal the processes responsible for the transitional regime between the fully wetting and the fully levitated droplet as the solid temperature increases, thus shedding light on the characteristic time and length scales setting the dynamic Leidenfrost temperature for droplet impact on an isothermal substrate. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.064501 Boiling and spreading of droplets impacting on hot substrates have been extensively studied since both phenomena strongly affect the heat transfer between the liquid and the solid. Applications include spray cooling [1], spray combustion [2], and others [3].At room temperature, an impacting droplet spreads on a solid surface and entraps a bubble under it [4][5][6]. At temperatures higher than the boiling temperature T b , vapor bubbles appear which disturb and finally rupture the free surface, resulting in the violent spattering of tiny droplets [7,8]. On even hotter surfaces, however, beyond the socalled Leidenfrost temperature T L , the droplet interface becomes smooth again without any bubbles inside it. In this regime the droplet lives much longer, as now it levitates on its own vapor layer: the well-known Leidenfrost effect [9,10].In order to determine the Leidenfrost temperature T L and its dependence on the impact velocity U, phase diagrams have been experimentally produced for various impacting droplets with many combinations of substrates and liquids: water on smooth silicon [8], water on microstructured silicon [11], FC-72 on carbon nanofiber [12], water on aluminium [13], and ethanol on sapphire [14]. All of these phase diagrams show a weakly increasing behavior of T L with U. When theoretically deriving T L , one needs to determine the vapor thickness profile. In the case of a gently deposited droplet, this can be accomplished since the shape of the droplet is fixed except for the bottom surface, which reduces the problem to a lubrication flow of vapor in the gap between the substrate and the free surface [15][16][17][18][19][20]. For impacting droplets on an unheated surface at high Weber number We ≡ ρU 2 D 0 =σ (here, D 0 is the equivalent diameter of the droplet and ρ and σ are the density and the surface tension of the liquid, respectively), it is known that the neck around the dimple beneath the impacting droplet rams the surface. In this cold impact case, the neck propagates outwards like a wave [21]. For impact on a superheated s...

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Bouncing and coalescence of a pair of slightly deformed bubbles rising side by side in a quiescent liquid are experimentally studied. The trajectories and shapes of the bubbles are investigated in detail by using a high-speed video camera. The wakes of bubbles are visualized by using a photochromic dye that is colored with UV light irradiation. We observe that the patterns of the trajectories of rising bubbles are strongly dependent on the Reynolds number. When the Reynolds number is over the critical region, two bubbles approach each other and then collide. After the collision, two types of motions are observed-coalescence and bouncing. We investigate the critical Reynolds number and Weber number over which the bubbles bounce. In the definitions of these numbers, we use vertical velocity, instead of horizontal one, as the characteristic velocity. We clarify that the critical Weber number is around 2 regardless of the Morton number. The critical Reynolds number decreases with an increase in the Morton number. Moreover, the visualization of the wake of bubbles enables us to observe the vortex separation from the rear surface of the bubbles on collision. We find that the vortex separation from the rear of bouncing bubbles causes a decrease in the rising velocity and an increase in the horizontal speed after their collision. We also observe that the behavior of repeatedly bouncing bubbles is significantly influenced by the wake instability of a single bubble rather than by the bubble-bubble interaction.By applying an existing model for spherical bubble-bubble interaction, we clarify that the revised model accurately describes the trajectory of a pair of slightly deformed bubbles using the restitution coefficient and velocity fluctuation from the experimental results.

In the study of interactions between liquids and solids, an accurate measurement of the film thickness between the two media is essential to study the dynamics. As interferometry is restricted by the wavelength of the light source used, recent studies of thinner films have prompted the use of frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR). In many studies the assumption of a simple exponential decay of the intensity with film thickness was used. In the present study we highlight that this model does not satisfy the Fresnel equations and thus gives an underestimation of the films. We show that the multiple reflections and transmissions at both the upper and the lower interfaces of the film must be taken into account to accurately describe the measured intensity. In order to quantitatively validate the FTIR technique, we measured the film thickness of the air gap between a convex lens of known geometry and a flat surface and obtain excellent agreement. Furthermore, we also found that we can accurately measure the elastic deformations of the lens under loads by comparing them with the results of the Herzian theory.