The Role of Viscoelasticity in Bubble Breaking

The rupture dynamics of a bubble affects many phenomena in nature, e.g., magma fragmentation in volcanology, the opening of vesicles in medicine, and many processing technologies from the production of polymeric foams to the cooking of pancakes^1-2. If the bubble is made of a viscoelastic fluid, it can store elastic energy during inflation that can be released during rupture, in turn affecting the breaking dynamics. In the present contribution, we investigate experimentally the way elastic energy (stored as a consequence of fast bubble inflation) drives rupture in a model viscoelastic fluid. A viscoelastic bubble is created via a pump and a homemade inflating system, a hot needle induces rupture and a fast camera is used to acquire images of the hole opening over time. The roles of the extensional rate and of the stored elastic energy on bubble rupture are investigated, and a new mathematical model to describe the rupture phenomenon is developed.

[1] de Gennes PG, Brochard-Wyart F and Quéré D, Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena, Springer (2004).

[2] Eggers J and Villermaux E, Physics of liquid jets, Rep. Prog. Phys., 71, 036601 (2008).