Solitary-like waves in a liquid foam microchannel

Yann Bouret (1) , Alexandre Cohen (1) , Nathalie Fraysse (1) , Médéric Argentina (2, 3) , Christophe Raufaste (1)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée
2 IUF - Institut universitaire de France
3 INLN - Institut Non Linéaire de Nice Sophia-Antipolis

Plateau borders are liquid microchannels located at the contact between three bubbles in liquid foams. They are stable, deformable and can be thought of as quasi-1D model systems to study surface waves in fluid dynamics. We show that the burst of a bubble trapped in a PB produces local constrictions which travel along the liquid channel at constant velocity, without significant change in shape. These patterns are reminiscent of the depression solitary waves encountered in nonlinear systems. By coupling flow inertia to capillary stresses, we derive a simple model that admits solitonic solutions, which we characterized numerically and analytically in the limit of small deformation. These solutions capture most of the features observed experimentally.

Domaines: Physique [physics]; Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Yann Bouret, Alexandre Cohen, Nathalie Fraysse, Médéric Argentina, Christophe Raufaste. Solitary-like waves in a liquid foam microchannel. Physical Review Fluids, 2016, 1, pp.043902. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevFluids.1.043902⟩. ⟨hal-01358086⟩