Coarsening transitions of wet liquid foams under microgravity conditions

Soft Matter. 2023 Aug 23;19(33):6267-6279. doi: 10.1039/d3sm00535f.

Abstract

We report foam coarsening studies which were performed in the International Space Station (ISS) to suppress drainage due to gravity. Foams and bubbly liquids with controlled liquid fractions ϕ between 15 and 50% were investigated to study the transition between bubble growth laws previously reported near the dry limit ϕ → 0 and the dilute limit ϕ → 1 (Ostwald ripening). We determined the coarsening rates for the driest foams and the bubbly liquids, they are in close agreement with theoretical predictions. We observe a sharp cross-over between the respective laws at a critical value ϕ*. At liquid fractions beyond this transition, neighboring bubbles are no longer all in contact, like at a jamming transition. Remarkably ϕ* is significantly larger than the random close packing volume fraction of the bubbles ϕrcp which was determined independently. We attribute the differences between ϕ* and ϕrcp to a weakly adhesive bubble interaction that we have studied in complementary ground-based experiments.