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Birth of a bubble: drop impact onto a thin liquid film for an immiscible three-fluid system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2025

Pierre-Antoine Maës Open the ORCID record for Pierre-Antoine Maës [Opens in a new window] ,
Alidad Amirfazli  and
Christophe Josserand
Pierre-Antoine Maës*
Affiliation:
LadHyX, CNRS & Ecole Polytechnique, UMR 7646, IP Paris, 91128 Palaiseau, France
Alidad Amirfazli
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
Christophe Josserand
Affiliation:
LadHyX, CNRS & Ecole Polytechnique, UMR 7646, IP Paris, 91128 Palaiseau, France
*
Corresponding author: Pierre-Antoine Maës, [email protected]
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Abstract

When a drop impacts a solid substrate or a thin liquid film, a thin gas disc is entrapped due to surface tension, the gas disc retracting into one or several bubbles. While the evolution of the gas disc for impact on solid substrate or film of the same fluid as the drop has been largely studied, little is known on how it varies when the liquid of the film is different from that of the drop. We study numerically the latter unexplored area, focusing on the contact between the drop and the film, leading to the formation of an air bubble. The volume of fluid method was adapted to three fluids in the framework of the Basilisk solver. The numerical simulations show that the deformation of the liquid film due to air cushioning plays a crucial role in bubble entrapment. A new model for the contact time and the entrapment geometry was deduced from the case of the impact on a solid substrate. This was done by considering the deformation of the thin immiscible liquid layer during impact depending mainly on its thickness and viscosity. The lubrication of the gas layer was found to be the major effect governing bubble entrapment. However, the film viscosity was also identified as having a critical role in bubble formation and evolution; the magnitude of its influence was also quantified.

JFM classification

Drops and Bubbles: Drops Drops and Bubbles: Bubble dynamics Multiphase and Particle-laden Flows: Multiphase flow
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 1009 , 25 April 2025 , A8
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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