Two-dimensional flow of foam around an obstacle: force measurements
Abstract
A Stokes experiment for foams is proposed. It consists in a two-dimensional flow of a foam, confined between a water subphase and a top plate, around a fixed circular obstacle. We present systematic measurements of the drag exerted by the flowing foam on the obstacle, \emph{versus} various separately controlled parameters: flow rate, bubble volume, bulk viscosity, obstacle size, shape and boundary conditions. We separate the drag into two contributions, an elastic one (yield drag) at vanishing flow rate, and a fluid one (viscous coefficient) increasing with flow rate. We quantify the influence of each control parameter on the drag. The results exhibit in particular a power-law dependence of the drag as a function of the bulk viscosity and the flow rate with two different exponents. Moreover, we show that the drag decreases with bubble size, and increases proportionally to the obstacle size. We quantify the effect of shape through a dimensioned drag coefficient, and we show that the effect of boundary conditions is small.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0410319,
title = {Two-dimensional flow of foam around an obstacle: force measurements},
author = {Benjamin Dollet and Florence Elias and Catherine Quilliet and Christophe Raufaste and Miguel Aubouy and Francois Graner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0410319},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
26 pages, 13 figures, resubmitted version to Phys. Rev. E