Liquid Hertz Contact: softness of weakly deformed drops on non-wetting substrates

TL;DR

This paper reveals that linear models are insufficient for describing the dynamics of weakly deformed droplets on non-wetting surfaces, and introduces a logarithmic correction to better explain experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a logarithmic correction to linear models to accurately describe droplet dynamics on super-hydrophobic substrates, addressing previous model limitations.

Findings

Linear models fail to capture droplet oscillations and bouncing behaviors.

Logarithmic correction improves agreement with experimental data.

Peculiar droplet behaviors can be explained by the corrected model.

Abstract

The behavior of weakly deformed drops on non wetting surfaces is usually described using linear models. We show that these simple pictures cannot account for measurements of the dynamics of droplets that oscillate or bounce on super-hydrophobic substrates. We demonstrate that several peculiar experimental observations observed in previous works can be understood through a logarithmic correction of the linear model.