Wave drag on floating bodies

Marie Le Merrer (1, 2) , Christophe Clanet (1, 2) , David Quéré (1, 2) , Elie Raphaël (3) , Frédéric Chevy (4)

1 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique
2 PMMH - Physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogenes (UMR 7636)
3 LPCT - Laboratoire de Physico-Chimie Théorique
4 LKB (Lhomond) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel

We measure the deceleration of liquid nitrogen drops floating at the surface of a liquid bath. On water, the friction force is found to be about 10 to 100 times larger than on a solid substrate, which is shown to arise from wave resistance. We investigate the influence of the bath viscosity and show that the dissipation decreases as the viscosity is increased, owing to wave damping. The measured resistance is well predicted by a model imposing a vertical force (i.e., the drop weight) on a finite area, as long as the wake can be considered stationary.

Domains: Fluid mechanics [physics.class-ph]; Fluids mechanics [physics.class-ph]

Marie Le Merrer, Christophe Clanet, David Quéré, Elie Raphaël, Frédéric Chevy. Wave drag on floating bodies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011, 108 (37), pp.15064-15068. ⟨10.1073/pnas.1106662108⟩. ⟨hal-00998005⟩