Biomimetic mechanics behaviors of the strider leg vertically pressing water

Water striders capture the amazing feature to walk on water surface, and this phenomenon triggered extensive investigations in the past decades. We model the strider leg as a fiber vertically pressing into water surface and explore some striking mechanics behaviors in this process. First, the meniscus morphology is exactly solved by a numerical scheme. Based upon this solution, a non-dimensional parameter is defined in order to properly characterize the “capillary effect” of the objects with different volumes. The discussion of the buoyant force shows that the apparent contact angle has little impact on the variation of the water-supporting force. Besides this, there is no need for the strider leg to pierce into water, for the pinning of the triple contact line ensures a bigger buoyant force. In addition, the radius of the leg should be in an appropriate range to support the body weight. These analyses may cast light on how to design new-typed miniature aquatic devices.