How elasticity affects bubble pinch-off
Abstract
The pinch-off of bubbles in viscoelastic liquids is a fundamental process that has received little attention compared to viscoelastic drop pinch-off. While these processes exhibit qualitative similarities, the dynamics of the pinch-off process are significantly different. When a drop of a dilute polymer solution pinches off, a thread is known to develop that prevents breakup due the diverging polymer stresses. Conversely, our experiments reveal that this thread is absent for bubble pinch-off in dilute polymer solutions. We show that a thread becomes apparent only for high polymer concentrations, where the pinch-off dynamics become very sensitive to the size of the needle from which the bubble detaches. The experiments are complemented by numerical simulations and analytical modeling using the Oldroyd-B model, which capture the dilute regime. The model shows that polymer stresses are still singular during bubble pinch-off, but the divergence is much weaker as compared to drop pinch-off. This explains why, in contrast to droplets, viscoelastic bubble-threads do not appear for dilute suspensions but require large polymer concentrations
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.20075,
title = {How elasticity affects bubble pinch-off},
author = {Coen I. Verschuur and Alexandros T. Oratis and Vatsal Sanjay and Jacco H. Snoeijer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.20075},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Physical Review Fluids