Drops impacting at low velocities onto a pool surface can stretch out thin hemispherical sheets of air between the drop and the pool. These air sheets can remain intact until they reach submicron thicknesses, at which point they rupture to form a myriad of microbubbles. By impacting a higher-viscosity drop onto a lower-viscosity pool, we have explored new geometries of such air films. In this way we are able to maintain stable air layers which can wrap around the entire drop to form repeatable antibubbles, i.e. spherical air layers bounded by inner and outer liquid masses. Furthermore, for the most viscous drops they enter the pool trailing a viscous thread reaching all the way to the pinch-off nozzle. The air sheet can also wrap around this thread and remain stable over an extended period of time to form a cylindrical air sheet. We study the parameter regime where these structures appear and their subsequent breakup. The stability of these thin cylindrical air sheets is inconsistent with inviscid stability theory, suggesting stabilization by lubrication forces within the submicron air layer. We use interferometry to measure the air-layer thickness versus depth along the cylindrical air sheet and around the drop. The air film is thickest above the equator of the drop, but thinner below the drop and up along the air cylinder. Based on microbubble volumes, the thickness of the cylindrical air layer becomes less than 100 nm before it ruptures.

CitationLi EQ, Beilharz D, Thoroddsen ST (2017) We study the intricate buckling patterns which can form when a viscous drop impacts a much lower viscosity miscible pool. The drop enters the pool by its impact inertia, flattens, and sinks by its own weight while stretching into a hemispheric bowl. Upward motion along the outer bottom surface of this bowl produces a vortical boundary layer which separates along its top and rolls up into a vortex ring. The vorticity is therefore produced in a fundamentally different way than for a drop impacting a pool of the same liquid. The vortex ring subsequently advects into the bowl, thereby stretching the drop liquid into ever thinner sheets, reaching the micron level. The rotating motion around the vortex pulls in folds to form multiple windings of double-walled toroidal viscous sheets. The axisymmetric velocity field thereby stretches the drop liquid into progressively finer sheets, which are susceptible to both axial and azimuthal compression-induced buckling. The azimuthal buckling of the sheets tends to occur on the inner side of the vortex ring, while their folds can be stretched and straightened on the outside edge. We characterize the total stretching from high-speed video imaging and use particle image velocimetry to track the formation and evolution of the vortex ring. The total interfacial area between the drop and the pool liquid can grow over 40-fold during the first 50 ms after impact. Increasing pool viscosity shows entrapment of a large bubble on top of the drop, while lowering the drop viscosity produces intricate buckled shapes, appearing at the earliest stage and being promoted by the crater motions. We also present an image collage of the most intriguing and convoluted structures observed. Finally, a simple point-vortex model reproduces some features from the experiments and shows variable stretching along the wrapping sheets.