Flowering in bursting bubbles with viscoelastic interfaces

Abstract

The lifetime of bubbles, from formation to rupture, attracts attention because bubbles are often present in natural and industrial processes, and their geometry, drainage, coarsening, and rupture strongly affect those operations. Bubble rupture happens rapidly, and it may generate a cascade of small droplets or bubbles. Once a hole is nucleated within a bubble, it opens up with a variety of shapes and velocities depending on the liquid properties. A range of bubble rupture modes are reported in literature in which the reduction of a surface energy drives the rupture against inertial and viscous forces. The role of surface viscoelasticity of the liquid film in this colorful scenario is, however, still unknown. We found that the presence of interfacial viscoelasticity has a profound effect in the bubble bursting dynamics. Indeed, we observed different bubble bursting mechanisms upon the transition from viscous-controlled to surface viscoelasticity-controlled rupture. When this transition occurs, a bursting bubble resembling the blooming of a flower is observed. A simple modeling argument is proposed, leading to the prediction of the characteristic length scales and the number and shape of the bubble flower petals, thus paving the way for the control of liquid formulations with surface viscoelasticity as a key ingredient. These findings can have important implications in the study of bubble dynamics, with consequences for the numerous processes involving bubble rupture. Bubble flowering can indeed impact phenomena such as the spreading of nutrients in nature or the life of cells in bioreactors.

Retraction of thin films coated by insoluble surfactants

“…The present work represents a first step towards understanding the effects of a more complicated and solid-like interfacial rheology on the retraction of thin films. Previous studies showed that high-speed deformations of structured interfaces possessing solid-like behaviour and stress relaxation may lead to qualitatively different behaviours compared to their quasistatic counterpart (Petit et al 2015;Pitois, Buisson & Chateau 2015;Poulichet & Garbin 2015;Huerre, De Corato & Garbin 2018;Garbin 2019;Tammaro et al 2021). In future works, we will investigate the retraction of fluid with interfaces that have complex behaviour, including pressure-dependent surface viscosity, concentration-dependent bending modulus, shear elasticity, stress relaxation and surface yield stress (Fuller & Vermant 2012;Beltramo et al 2017;Jaensson et al 2021).…”

“…2015; Pitois, Buisson & Chateau 2015; Poulichet & Garbin 2015; Huerre, De Corato & Garbin 2018; Garbin 2019; Tammaro et al. 2021). In future works, we will investigate the retraction of fluid with interfaces that have complex behaviour, including pressure-dependent surface viscosity, concentration-dependent bending modulus, shear elasticity, stress relaxation and surface yield stress (Fuller & Vermant 2012; Beltramo et al.…”

“…In future works, we will investigate the retraction of fluid with interfaces that have complex behaviour, including pressure-dependent surface viscosity, concentration-dependent bending modulus, shear elasticity, stress relaxation and surface yield stress (Fuller & Vermant 2012;Beltramo et al 2017;Jaensson et al 2021). We believe that including some of these features in our simulations could shed light on the mechanical instabilities observed in the retraction of films with structured interfaces (Petit et al 2015;Tammaro et al 2021). used in the Newton-Raphson method.…”

“…We are not aware of detailed numerical simulations of the retraction of liquid films or of films displaying more solid-like interfacial rheological responses such as yield stress or stress relaxation (Jaensson, Anderson & Vermant 2021). Going beyond simple interfacial constitutive laws considering surface viscosity (Scriven 1960) is especially important because interfacial viscoelasticity can have a profound role in the bubble bursting dynamics and can lead to mechanical instabilities of the liquid-gas interface, which then dominate the dynamics of the bursting film (Petit et al 2015;Habibi & Krechetnikov 2021;Tammaro et al 2021).…”

Foaming and antifoaming in non-aqueous liquids

“…Similar to aqueous systems [71,101,102], interfacial rheological properties including surface shear and dilatational viscoelasticity can stabilize non-aqueous thin films as well [17]. Surface shear viscosity, similar to bulk viscosity, can stabilize foams by retarding drainage [8,54,103].…”