Vibration-induced floatation of a heavy liquid drop on a lighter liquid film

We carry out a theoretical study of vibration-induced saturation of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability for an isolated liquid drop on the surface of a less dense finite-thickness carrier film. Without vibration, a heavy drop falls through the carrier film by forming a stretching liquid column until the bottom tip of the column reaches the solid substrate and the carrier film ruptures. We show that an externally applied vertical vibration prevents the rupture of the film and enables stable flotation of the drop. A hydrodynamic model is used to study the effect of inertia on the long-time dynamics of the drop. It is shown that rupture can only be prevented when the Reynolds number is nonzero.