Resonant and antiresonant bouncing droplets

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2015 Feb;91(2):023017. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.91.023017. Epub 2015 Feb 24.

Abstract

When placed onto a vibrating liquid bath, a droplet may adopt a permanent bouncing behavior, depending on both the forcing frequency and the forcing amplitude. The relationship between the droplet deformations and the bouncing mechanism is studied experimentally and theoretically through an asymmetric and dissipative bouncing spring model. Antiresonance phenomena are evidenced. Experiments and theoretical predictions show that both resonance at specific frequencies and antiresonance at Rayleigh frequencies play crucial roles in the bouncing mechanism. In particular, we show that they could be exploited for bouncing droplet size selection.