Jet impact on a soap film

TL;DR

This study experimentally explores how a liquid jet interacts with a soap film, revealing two steady regimes—refraction-like deflection and absorption with undulation—offering insights into fluid dynamics and foam stability.

Contribution

It introduces a new experimental investigation of jet-soap film interactions, identifying distinct flow regimes and potential applications in microfluidics and foam stability analysis.

Findings

Jet never breaks the soap film.

Two steady regimes: refraction-like deflection and absorption with undulation.

Potential applications in guiding microfluidic flows and probing foam stability.

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the impact of a liquid jet on a soap film. We observe that the jet never breaks the film and that two qualitatively different steady regimes may occur. The first one is a refraction-like behavior obtained at small incidence angles when the jet crosses the film and is deflected by the film-jet interaction. For larger incidence angles, the jet is absorbed by the film, giving rise to a new class of flow in which the jet undulates along the film with a characteristic wavelength. Besides its fundamental interest, this study presents a new way to guide a micro-metric flow of liquid in the inertial regime and to probe foam stability submitted to violent perturbations at the soap film scale.