Spreading of droplets under various gravitational accelerations

We describe a setup to perform systematic studies on the spreading of droplets of complex fluids under microgravity conditions. Tweaking the gravitational acceleration under which droplets are deposited provides access to different regimes of the spreading dynamics, as quantified through the Bond number. In particular, microgravity allows us to form large droplets while remaining in the regime where surface tension effects and internal driving stresses are predominant over hydrostatic forces. The vip-drop² (visco-plastic droplets on the drop tower) experimental module provides a versatile platform to study a wide range of complex fluids through the deposition of axisymmetric droplets. The module offers the possibility to deposit droplets on a precursor layer, which can be composed of the same or a different fluid. Furthermore, it allows us to deposit four droplets simultaneously while conducting shadowgraphy on all of them and observing either the flow field (through particle image velocimetry) or the stress distribution inside the droplet in the case of stress birefringent fluids. It was developed for a drop tower catapult system, is designed to withstand a vertical acceleration of up to 30 times the Earth's gravitational acceleration in the downward direction, and is capable of operating remotely under microgravity conditions. We provide a detailed description of the module and an exemplary data analysis for droplets spreading on-ground and in microgravity.