Abstract: We experimentally studied droplet impact dynamics onto wing feathers of kingfishers. Distilled water droplets with a fixed diameter of 2.06 mm were used as drop liquid and the initial impact velocities of droplets varied from 0.28 m•s−1 to 1.60 m•s−1. Two high-speed cameras were utilized to capture the impact process of water droplets onto the wing feather surface from both horizontal and vertical directions. Two states of the feathers (elastic and inelastic) were considered to study the influence of elasticity. At the entire impact ve-locity range we studied, regular rebound, bubble trapping and jetting, partial pinning and partial rebound of droplets on inelastic wing feather surface were observed as the initial impact velocity increased. However, only one dynamic behavior (regular rebound) was found on the elastic wing feather surface. The elasticity plays a more important role in the direction difference of droplet spreading than wing feather microstructure. The contact time of water droplets on the elastic wing feather surface was less than that on the inelastic surface within the range of Web numbers from 1.06 to 36 under test conditions.

Key words: droplet impact, kingfisher feather, contact time, elasticity, spreading behavior, bionic