ガス過飽和ゼラチンゲルにおける球形気泡の準静的成長

Abstract

We study, with experiments and theory, effects of elasticity on quasi-static growth of spherical bubbles under gas supersaturation in gelatin gels. An optical system is developed to trigger gas bubble nucleation by focusing a laser pulse into gas-supersaturated gelatin gels and visualize the subsequent bubble growth driven by the mass influx of the dissolved gases; the growth rate is found to be hindered by the gel elasticity. To quantify effects of the gel elasticity on the bubble growth, the Epstein–Plesset theory is extended to the case of bubbles in linear elastic materials of Voigt type. It is found from comparisons between the experiments and the proposed theory that the modeling with linear elasticity is applicable to the case with gels of low gelatin concentrations.