Film rupture and Avalanches in Bubble monolayers

H. RITACCO; A. SAINT-JALMES; D. LANGEVIN

Utrecht, The Netherlands

Conferencia; 6th Liquid Matter Conference; 2005

European Physical Society and Utrecht University

The problem of film rupture and foam collapse is the most poorly understood in the physics of foams. We study “monolayer foams”, comprised of uniformly sized soap bubbles on a liquid surface, as a function of bubble size and for different systems with different surface and bulk properties. We can define two regimes: (1) Period between bubble monolayer creation and the first bubble collapse; the characteristic time depends on surface an bulk liquid properties. (2)Period where the foam collapse proceeds by avalanches of rupturing bubbles. In this last case the time elapsed until the complete collapse of the bubble monolayer is almost independent of the bubble size and surface properties of the chemical systems but very dependent on bulk viscosity. We discuss this phenomena theoretically.