11th International Conference on Multiphase Flow,

ICMF 2023, Kobe, Japan, April 2–7, 2023

Impact dynamics of a rigid sphere onto water: Influence of surface wettability

Prasanna Kumar Billa, Tejaswi Josyula and Pallab Sinha Mahapatra

Micro Nano Bio Fluidics group, Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Chennai, 600036, India
pallab@iitm.ac.in

Keywords: Superhydrophobicity, High speed imaging, Sphere trajectories, Air entrainment

Abstract

We study the underwater behaviour of rigid spheres impacting onto quiescent water. The effect of surface wettability is
investigated by comparing the impact dynamics of conventional and superhydrophobic spheres. Experiments are conducted
over a range of sphere densities, for a fixed sphere diameter (d = 10 mm) and Weber number (W e = 204.37). It is observed
that a conventional sphere deviates from its vertical impact position before attaining terminal (settling) velocity. However, for
the same initial conditions, a superhydrophobic sphere moves in a straight line, which is attributed due to the entrapment of air
at the wake of the sphere. Further, a detailed analysis of the cavity diameter, pinch-off depth, pinch-off location, and surface
wettability’s influence on sphere dynamics is carried out.

Introduction
Vacuum pump
Impact of solids on liquids is a classic fluid mechanics prob-
Pipette
lem with many practical applications such as underwater mis- Stand

siles, bullets, air-to-sea anti-torpedo defence systems, oceano-
graphic instruments, ship slamming, and water entry of ath-
letes in aquatic sports. It is important to study the underwater
behavior of a sphere, thus the effect of cavities on the kinetics
of the sphere. Further, the entrained volume at the sphere’s
wake alters the trajectory of the sphere. Additionally, the dy-
namics of the sphere are studied to see how the creation of
cavities influences them.
Bush et al. (2009) have explored the effect of a solid
mass on the air’s transient cavities for low bond numbers,
as well as other forms of cavity formations, and they have
theoretically modelled the evolution of cavity for small hy-
drophobic spheres. However, The authors haven’t looked
into how cavities change the trajectories of superhydropho-
bic spheres, which makes them different from conventional
spheres. Later, (Vakarelski et al. 2017) have investigated
the impact of cavity-encapsulated spheres on water as well
as the reduction of drag for a variety of impact circumstances
with increasing cavity volume. Sun et al. (2021) investi-
gated the pinch-off dynamics, splash evolution and effect of
viscous layer for different conditions.It is very much essen-
tial to investigate the impact that the axisymmetric cavity has
on the trajectories of spheres under a variety of impact sce-
narios and with a wide range of parameters which is lacking
in the prior literature. A thorough analysis of the asymetric
behaviour of conventional to axisymetric superhydrophobic
spheres is required in order to embed solid objects in specific
locations in liquid, such as oceanographic instruments and
anti-defence systems.
Water tank Computer
Phantom high
Light source speed camera
Optical table
Figure 1: Schematic of the experimental setup.
Experimental Methodology
A schematic of the experimental setup is shown in figure 1.
The experimental setup comprises of a 200 mm × 200 mm ×
400 mm acrylic water tank. Free fall of spheres from a fixed
height is achieved by creating suction at the end of a needle
tip using a vacuum pump. When the suction is removed by
using a vacuum regulator, the sphere will be released from
the needle tip and will impact the quiescent water. The ex-
perimental setup is placed on an optical table (HOLMARC,
India), which allows for mobility and localised air suspen-
sion for a variation free base needed for small-scale investi-
gations. A high speed camera (Phantom, VEO-340L) with a
micro lens (Nikon, 60 mm) is used to capture the motion of
the spheres inside the fluid. The camera is operated at 3000
FPS with an exposure time of 990 µs and a resolution of 768
× 1024 pixels. The working distance is fixed to achieve a

1

(a) (b)
Conventional steel sphere Conventional glass sphere
Superhydrophobic steel sphere Superhydrophobic glass sphere
Figure 2: Sequence of images with impact We 204.37, a time interval of 4.17 ms for (a) Steel sphere (ρ/ρl =7.926) , (b) Glass
sphere 4.375 (ρ/ρl =2.771) and (c) Penetration depth of the sphere with time. The green line shows a straight line
path from the position of initial contact at the liquid interface during impact. The red arrow indicates the deviation of
the sphere from vertical impact position.
spatial resolution of 3 µm. The container is illuminated from
the back, with a 15-watt recessed panel light (warm light).
Commercially available coating (NeverWet) is used to ren-
der the surface of the spheres as superhydrophobic in two
steps. First, by placing the spheres in a petri dish, the base
coat is sprayed two times and is left for a period of 30 min-
utes. In the second step, the top coat is sprayed two times
and the spheres are left in open air environment for 12 hours.
This resulted in an extreme water repellent surface.
Results and Discussion
When the upward force and the downward force are bal-
anced, a solid that is travelling through a liquid attains the ter-
minal velocity. When an object achieves its terminal velocity,
it moves at the same speed without changing its acceleration.
The behaviour of different density spheres after reaching the
terminal velocity are observed and concluded that the devi-
ation in vertical impact position is inversely proportional to
the density and diameter (see figure 2 (c) ) for conventional
spheres. Shi et al. (2019); Sun et al. (2021) investigated the
evolution of cavity and pinch-off dynamics when a superhy-
drophobic sphere with various densities impact on a liquid.
Figure 2(c) shows the conventional and superhydrophobic
sphere trajectories of steel (ρ/ρl =7.926), glass ( ρ/ρl =2.771),
polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE ρ/ρl =2.167) and Polyoxymethy-
lene (POM or Poly acetal ρ/ρl =1.375 ) impacting on qui-
escent water. Penetration depth (PD), velocities and accel-
eration are obtained using in-house MATLAB codes. It is
observed that the conventional spheres (ρ/ρl =1.375, 2.167,
2.771) tend to deviate from the vertical impact position for
constant We and diameter due to velocity gradient on the
surface. This effect can be overcome by applying a superhy-
drophobic coating on the surface of the sphere. Air entrain-
ment occurs when surface wettablity modified sphere im-
pacts the stagnant liquid. Figure 2 shows the underwater be-
havior of conventional, surface wettablity modified spheres,
cavity formation, trajectories of diameter 10 mm with impact
We 204.37 and observed that there is no deviation from ver-
11th International Conference on Multiphase Flow,
ICMF 2023, Kobe, Japan, April 2–7, 2023
(c)
0
Non-coated SH coated
ρ/ρl = 1.375
ρ/ρl = 2.167
PD (mm)
-40
ρ/ρl = 2.771
ρ/ρl = 7.926
-80
-120
0 100 200 300
t (ms)
tical impact position after coating due to entrainment of air
at the wake of sphere surface. The entrapped air reduces the
drag force (Vakarelski et al. 2017) acting on solid sphere so
that the time travelled by the sphere to reach a specific posi-
tion is lesser for the superhydrophobic sphere than a conven-
tional sphere. Further experiments are planned with different
initial conditions and diameters to observe the dynamics of
spheres and cavities.
Conclusion
According to the findings of this study, modifying the surface
wettability will result in a significant change in sphere trajec-
tories. For the same impact Weber number and diameter, the
conventional sphere exhibits a shift in vertical path that the
superhydrophobic sphere does not. It is also determined that
the cavity-encapsulated sphere moves quicker than the con-
ventional sphere. Furthermore, we aim to develop the rela-
tion among the impacting conditions and the trajectory of the
sphere in terms of penetration depth, geometric parameters
of the formed cavities behind the sphere.
References
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Shi, Yao, Guanhua Wang, and Guang Pan. Experimental
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067103.
Sun, Tiezhi, et al. Experimental study of the effects of a vis-
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