A gas cavity can reduce the hydrodynamic drag on a falling sphere in liquid to near zero by providing perfect slip conditions.

It is well known that the water entry of a sphere causes cavity formation above a critical impact velocity as a function of the solid–liquid contact angle; Duez et al. (Nat. Phys., vol. 3 (3), 2007, pp. 180–183). Using a rough sphere with a contact angle of $120^{\circ }$ , Aristoff & Bush (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 619, 2009, pp. 45–78) showed that there are four different cavity shapes dependent on the Bond and Weber numbers (i.e., quasistatic, shallow, deep and surface). We experimentally alter the Bond number, Weber number and contact angle of smooth spheres and find two key additions to the literature: (1) cavity shape also depends on the contact angle; (2) the absence of a splash crown at low Weber number results in cavity formation below the predicted critical velocity. In addition, we use alternate scales in defining the Bond, Weber and Froude numbers to predict the cavity shapes and scale pinch-off times for various impacting bodies (e.g., spheres, multidroplet streams and jets) on the same plots, merging the often separated studies of solid–liquid and liquid–liquid impact in the literature.

We present new observations from an experimental investigation of the classical problem of the crown splash and sealing phenomena observed during the impact of spheres onto quiescent liquid pools. In the experiments, a 6 m tall vacuum chamber was used to provide the required ambient conditions from atmospheric pressure down to 1/16th of an atmosphere, whilst high-speed videography was exploited to focus primarily on the above-surface crown formation and ensuing dynamics, paying particular attention to the moments just prior to the surface seal. In doing so, we have observed a buckling-type azimuthal instability of the crown. This instability is characterised by vertical striations along the crown, between which thin films form that are more susceptible to the air flow and thus are drawn into the closing cavity, where they atomize to form a fine spray within the cavity. To elucidate to the primary mechanisms and forces at play, we varied the sphere diameter, liquid properties and ambient pressure. Furthermore, a comparison between the entry of room-temperature spheres, where the contact line pins around the equator, and Leidenfrost spheres (i.e. an immersed superheated sphere encompassed by a vapour layer), where there is no contact line, indicates that the buckling instability appears in all crown sealing events, but is intensified by the presence of a pinned contact line.

We report results from an experimental study of cavity formation during the impact of superhydrophobic spheres onto water. Using a simple splash-guard mechanism, we block the spray emerging during initial contact from closing thus eliminating the phenomenon known as 'surface seal', which typically occurs at Froude numbers Fr = V 2 0 /(gR 0 ) = O(100). As such, we are able to observe the evolution of a smooth cavity in a more extended parameter space than has been achieved in previous studies. Furthermore, by systematically varying the tank size and sphere diameter, we examine the influence of increasing wall effects on these guarded impact cavities and note the formation of surface undulations with wavelength λ = O(10) cm and acoustic waves λ a = O(D 0 ) along the cavity interface, which produce multiple pinch-off points. Acoustic waves are initiated by pressure perturbations, which themselves are generated by the primary cavity pinch-off. Using high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques we study the bulk fluid flow for the most constrained geometry and show the larger undulations (λ = O(10 cm)) have a fixed nature with respect to the lab frame. We show that previously deduced scalings for the normalized (primary) pinch-off location (ratio of pinch-off depth to sphere depth at pinch-off time), H p /H = 1/2, and pinch-off time, τ ∝ (R 0 /g) 1/2 , do not hold for these extended cavities in the presence of strong wall effects (sphere-to-tank diameter ratio), = D 0 /D tank 1/16. Instead, we find multiple distinct regimes for values of H p /H as the observed undulations are induced above the first pinch-off point as the impact speed increases. We also report observations of 'kinked' pinch-off points and the suppression of downward facing jets in the presence of wall effects. Surprisingly, upward facing jets emanating from first cavity pinch-off points evolve into a 'flat' structure at high impact speeds, both in the presence and absence of wall effects.

Abstract