Stability of Big Surface Bubbles: Impact of Evaporation and Bubbles Size

Surface bubbles have attracted much interest in the past decades. In this article, we propose to explore the lifetime and thinning dynamics of centimetric surface bubbles. We study the impact of the bubbles size as well as that of the atmospheric humidity through a careful control and systematic variation of the relative humidity in the measuring chamber. We first adress the question of the drainage under saturated water vapor conditions and show that a model including both capillary and gravity driven drainage provides the best prediction for this process. Additionally, unprecedented statistics on the bubbles lifetimes confirm experimentally that this parameter is set by evaporation to leading order. We make use of a model based on the overall thinning dynamics of the thin film and assume a rupture thickness of the order 10-100 nm to obtain a good representation of these data. For experiments conducted far from saturation, the convective evaporation of the bath is shown to dominate the overall mass loss in the cap film due to evaporation

Stability of vertical films of molten glass due to evaporation

International audienceFirst, we report observations achieved on a gravitationally-driven film drainage with molten glass pointing out a stabilizing effect when temperature is larger than 1250 C. A model to describe the change of surface tension with the film thickness due to the evaporation of oxide species is proposed. A lubrication model is derived taking into account the gradient of surface tension. The final system of equations describing the mass and the momentum conservations is numerically solved by an implicit time solver using a finite difference method at a second order scheme in time and space. The numerical procedure is applied to study a film drainage of molten soda-lime-silica glass. The effect of the surface tension gradient is investigated pointing out that with an increase of 0.5 % of the surface tension over the spread of the film which is order of few centimeters, the liquid film reaches an equilibrium thickness in agreement with previous experimental work

The Life of a Surface Bubble

Surface bubbles are present in many industrial processes and in nature, as well as in CO$_2$ beverage. They have motivated many theoretical, numerical and experimental works. This paper presents the current knowledge on the physics of surface bubbles lifetime and shows the diversity of mechanisms at play that depend on the properties of the bath, the interfaces and the ambient air. In particular, we explore the role of drainage and evaporation on film thinning. We highlight the existence of two different scenarios depending on whether the film cap ruptures at large or small thickness compared to the thickness at which van der Waals interaction come in to play

Bubble Formation in Yield Stress Fluids Using Flow-Focusing and T-Junction Devices

International audienceWe study the production of bubbles inside yield stress fluids (YSFs) in axisymmetric T-junction and flow-focusing devices. Taking advantage of yield stress over capillary stress, we exhibit a robust break-up mechanism reminiscent of the geometrical operating regime in 2D flow-focusing devices for Newtonian fluids. We report that when the gas is pressure driven, the dynamics is unsteady due to hydrodynamic feedback and YSF deposition on the walls of the channels. However, the present study also identifies pathways for potential steady-state production of bubbly YSFs at large scale

On the stability of the production of bubbles in yield-stress fluid using flow-focusing and T-junction devices

International audienceWe investigate experimentally the stability of bubble production in yield-stress fluids (YSF) and highly viscous silicone oil, using flow-focusing and T-junction devices. When the exit channel is initially pre-filled with the fluid and the gas is pressure-driven, the production is highly unstable, despite a regular frequency of bubble production in the junction. As observed for pressure-driven bubble trains in Newtonian fluids, we report that two mechanisms can explain these observations : (i) drastic reduction of the hydrodynamic pressure drop along the channel during the transient bubble production, which induces a rapid increase of the gas flow rate and (ii) thin film deposition resulting in a cascade of plug break-up and bubbles coalescence. While the drastic reduction of the pressure drop is inevitable in such two-phase flows, we show that modifying the surfaces of the channel can help stabilizing the system when the continuous phase is a YSF. To do so, we measure the thickness of the film deposited on the channel wall for rough and smooth channels. Our results are rationalized by introducing the inverse of the Bingham number Bi −1 comparing the viscous stress to the yield stress. For Bi −1 ≥ 1, a fast fluidization process associated to efficient deposition of YSF on the channel wall leads to a rapid destabilization of the bubble production. However, for Bi −1 < 1, the deposition driven by capillarity can be hindered by the wall-slip induced by the existence of the yield stress: the thickness of the deposited film is very thin and corresponds to the equivalent roughness of the channels. It is typically 40 µm thick for rough surfaces and below the limit of resolution of our setup for smooth surfaces. In this regime of Bi −1 and for smooth surfaces, the length of the plugs barely vanishes, thus the start-up flow is less prone to destabilization. These results therefore potentially open routes to steady production of aerated YSF on smooth channels in the regime of small Bi −1

How coatings with hydrophobic particles may change the drying of water droplets: incompressible surface versus porous media effects

International audienceThere is no clear statement on the role of particles in the drying of liquid marbles, which are liquid drops coated with hydrophobic solid particles. While some works report a similar drying time for liquid marbles and bare water drops others observe a faster evaporation of either liquid marbles or of bare water drops. To provide insight into the subject, we report water drying experiments in different configurations. We first focus on the drying of flat water surfaces coated with a single or several layers of hydrophobic micronic particles. Quite surprisingly, surfaces coated with a single layer of densely packed particles dry at the same speed as the bare surfaces. However, when coated with several layers of particles, the drying rate per unit surface area is significantly diminished. This effect is quantitatively explained by considering vapor diffusion through the porous media formed by the stacking of micronic particles above the interface. Then, we consider the drying of curved interfaces which are liquid marbles, i.e. drops coated with one monolayer of micronic particles. Those systematically dry faster than pure drops of the same initial volume. As the presence of a single layer of particles does not significantly affect the drying rate, this "speed-up" effect is attributed to the conservation of the surface area of the coated drop during the drying. Our quantitative experiments and understanding of the drying of liquid marbles therefore support the different results found in the literature: liquid marbles coated with one monolayer of fine solid particles do dry faster than water drops, while those coated with several layers - that may be formed by aggregates of nanoparticles - experience slower drying

Soft Matter Drainage in a rising foam

International audienceRising foams created by continuously blowing gas into a surfactant solution are widely used in many technical processes, such as flotation. The prediction of the liquid fraction profile in such flowing foams is of particular importance since this parameter controls the stability and the rheol-ogy of the final product. Using drift flux analysis and recently developed semi-empirical expressions for foam permeability and osmotic pressure, we build a model predicting the liquid fraction profile as a function of height. The theoretical profiles are very different if the interfaces are considered as mobile or rigid, but all of our experimental profiles are described by the model with mobile interfaces. Even the systems with dodecanol, which are well known to behave as rigid in forced drainage experiments. This is because in rising foams the liquid fraction profile is fixed by the flux at the bottom of the foam. Here the foam is wet with higher permeability and the interfaces are not in equilibrium. These results demonstrate once again that it is not only the surfactant system that controls the mobility of the interface, but also the hydrodynamic problem under consideration. For example liquid flow through the foam during generation or in forced drainage is intrinsically different

Perméabilité d'une mousse ultra-rigide

Nous nous intéressons à l'écoulement de liquide au sein d'un milieu poreux constitué d'un empilement de sphères molles. Du fait de leurs grandes déformabilités, une compression de l'empilement permet à la géométrie de la phase interstitielle d'évoluer et de s'approcher de celle d'une mousse (ou d'une émulsion) où les bulles (ou gouttes) sont remplacées par des billes solides. Toutefois, dans ce type d'expérience, à la différence de ce qui se passe dans une mousse, les conditions aux limites à la paroi sont celles d'une interface parfaitement rigide. Ce type de milieu simule donc fidèlement le comportement d'une mousse dont les interfaces seraient totalement figées -on parle alors de mousse "ultra-rigide". En diminuant le volume de la cellule d'étude, nous montrons qu'il est possible de passer d'une configuration "humide" - ou la perméabilité est régie par la géométrie d'un nœud - à une configuration "sèche" - ou la vitesse d'écoulement est déterminée par la géométrie des bords de Plateau - exactement de la même manière que dans une mousse ou une émulsion

Wall Slip of Soft-Jammed Systems: A Generic Simple Shear Process

International audienceFrom well-controlled long creep tests we show that the residual apparent yield stress observed with soft-jammed systems along smooth surfaces is an artefact due to edge effects. By removing these effects we can determine the stress solely associated with steady state wall slip below the material yield stress. This stress is found to vary linearly with the slip velocity for a wide range of materials whatever the structure, the interaction types between the elements and with the wall, and the concentration. Thus wall slip results from the laminar flow of some given free liquid volume remaining between the (rough) jammed structure formed by the elements, and the smooth wall. This phenomenon may be described by the simple shear flow in a Newtonian liquid layer of uniform thickness. For various systems this equivalent thickness varies in a narrow range (35 ± 15 nm)

Permeability of a bubble assembly: From the very dry to the wet limit

We measure the permeability of a fluidized bed of monodispersed bubbles with soap solution characteristic of mobile and non-mobile interfaces. These experimental data extend the permeability curves previously published for foam in the dry limit. In the wet limit, these data join the permeability curves of a hard sphere suspension at porosity equal to 0.4 and 0.6 in the cases of mobile and non-mobile interfaces respectively. We show that the model of permeability proposed by Kozeny and Carman and originally validated for packed beds of spheres (with porosity around 0.4) can be successfully applied with no adjustable parameters to liquid fractions from 0.001 up to 0.85 for systems made of monodisperse and deformable entities with non-mobile interfaces