Impulse-driven drop

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Drop deformation and disintegration regimes have been studied in many contexts ranging from an impact on a solid surface or a liquid layer of varying thickness to a liquid drop suspended in air and hit by a propagating aerodynamic shock wave. As a counterpart, deformation and disintegration of an initially static drop of controlled shape and size sitting on an impulsively driven stiff membrane are explored here experimentally. A significant amount of collected experimental data is used to map the possible drop morphological changes along with the transitions between them. In order to elucidate the effects of impulse intensity, viscosity, surface tension and wetting, we measured the crown height and radius in the drop deformation regimes, as well as the drop detachment and breakup times along with probability density functions of the secondary droplets in the drop disintegration regimes. With the goal to convey the physical mechanisms behind these transient responses, the observations are interpreted with phenomenological models, scalings and estimates highlighting the rich multiscale physics of the impulse-driven drop phenomena.