Nonlinear dynamics of trapped Leidenfrost drop

We present our experimental investigation of the dynamics of trapped ultra-mobile Leidenfrost water drop in heated spherical dishes. We use Leidenfrost drops to investigate non-linear motion of underdamped macroscopic objects in a two-dimensional Hookean field under thermal forces. We use high-speed video to image and locate the oscillating drops with different initial conditions. The motion of drops is examined with frequency spectra analysis and recurrence methods. We also evaluate quantitative markers of non-linear dynamics of Leidenfrost drops.

 

We found negative slope of spectral density in the frequency spectrum, positive maximum Lyapunov exponent and embedding dimension of 3. We detected repeating box structures with diagonal and orthogonal lines in the recurrence plot. We identified two major stages of Leidenfrost drop motion. A dissipative quasi-periodic behavior is identified in the first stage. The second stage is similar to the Brownian motion in a Hooke’s law potential well. We also detected “switching” behavior between directions of oscillation in the second stage, indicating a special noise-induced dynamics.