The size of films in dry foams

Abstract

The relationship between the size of films in a dry foam and the size of the bubbles isinvestigated. The study was carried out using foam structures simulated using SurfaceEvolver, with the structures covering a wide range of poly-dispersities. It was found thatthe most important factor influencing the size of a film is the size of the smaller bubble towhich it is attached. The larger bubble does have an influence, but it is much smaller, withthe film size increasing by approximately 80% as the larger bubble goes from thesame size as the smaller bubble to infinitely large. The relationship between afilm’s size and the size of the two bubbles to which it is attached was found to beindependent of the underlying bubble size distribution, with the probability distributionfor the size of the film depending only on the size of the neighbouring bubbles.