https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-025-00498-z
Regular Article - Flowing Matter
Size distribution of decaying foam bubbles
Department of Mechatronics, Konkuk University, 268 Chungwondaero, 27478, Chungju, South Korea
Received:
30
March
2025
Accepted:
28
May
2025
Published online:
21
June
2025
The most studies on the stability of foam bubbles investigated the mechanical stability of thin films between bubbles due to the drainage by gravity. In the current work, we take an alternative approach by assuming the rupture of bubbles as a series of random events and by investigating the time evolution of the size distribution of foam bubbles over a long time up to several hours. For this purpose, we first prepared layers of bubbles on Petri dishes by shaking soap solutions of a few different concentrations, and then we monitored the Petri dishes by using a time-lapse video imaging technique. We analyzed the captured images by custom software to count the bubble size distribution with respect to the initial concentration and elapsed time. From the statistics on our data, we find that the total bubble volume decreases exponentially in time, and the exponent, i.e., the mean lifetime, is a function of the bubble size. The mean lifetimes of larger bubbles are observed to be shorter than those of smaller bubbles, by approximately a factor of 2.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
