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Aqueous foams are ubiquitous; they appear in products and processes that span the cosmetics, food, and energy industries. The versatile applicability of foams comes as a result of their intrinsic viscous and elastic properties; for example, foams are exploited as drilling fluids in enhanced oil recovery for their high viscosity. Recently, so-called capillary foams were discovered: a class of foams that have excellent stability under static conditions and whose flow properties have so far remained unexplored. The unique architecture of these foams, containing oil-coated bubbles and a gelled network of oil-bridged particles, is expected to affect foam rheology. In this work, we report the first set of rheological data on capillary foams. We study the viscoelastic properties of capillary foams by conducting oscillatory and steady shear tests. We compare our results on the rheological properties of capillary foams to those reported for other aqueous foams. We find that capillary foams, which have low gas volume fractions, exhibit long lasting rheological stability as well as a yielding behavior that is reminiscent of surfactant foams with high gas volume fractions.
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Rheology of three-phase suspensions determined via dam-break experiments
Three-phase suspensions, of liquid that suspends dispersed solid particles and gas bubbles, are common in both natural and industrial settings. Their rheology is poorly constrained, particularly for high total suspended fractions (≳0.5). We use a dam-break consistometer to characterize the rheology of suspensions of (Newtonian) corn syrup, plastic particles and CO 2 bubbles. The study is motivated by a desire to understand the rheology of magma and lava. Our experiments are scaled to the volcanic system: they are conducted in the non-Brownian, non-inertial regime; bubble capillary number is varied across unity; and bubble and particle fractions are 0 ≤ ϕ gas ≤ 0.82 and 0 ≤ ϕ solid ≤ 0.37, respectively. We measure flow-front velocity and invert for a Herschel–Bulkley rheology model as a function of ϕ gas , ϕ solid , and the capillary number. We find a stronger increase in relative viscosity with increasing ϕ gas in the low to intermediate capillary number regime than predicted by existing theory, and find both shear-thinning and shear-thickening effects, depending on the capillary number. We apply our model to the existing community code for lava flow emplacement, PyFLOWGO, and predict increased viscosity and decreased velocity compared with current rheological models, suggesting existing models may not adequately account for the role of bubbles in stiffening lavas.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1929008
- PAR ID:
- 10373933
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
- Volume:
- 477
- Issue:
- 2254
- ISSN:
- 1364-5021
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2021.0394
