Experimental study of the flow structure stability on the bubble surface

TL;DR

This experimental study investigates the stability of flow structures on a bubble surface, revealing that surface flow symmetry breaks at critical conditions, leading to vortex formation and spiral trajectories, challenging common theoretical assumptions.

Contribution

The paper provides experimental evidence that axial symmetry assumptions in bubble surface flow models are invalid, highlighting the conditions for flow instability and vortex formation.

Findings

Flow symmetry breaks at critical bubble size, velocity, and contamination levels.

Vortex structures appear when flow instability occurs.

Spiral trajectories observed in water, straight in surfactant-free alcohol.

Abstract

The results of the flow structure visualization experiments conducted on the surface of a single bubble streamlined by uniform flow are presented. It is shown that, at certain critical values for bubble size, flow velocity, and contamination level, the axial symmetry of the surface flow loses its stability in a threshold manner, and the first instability mode in the form of two vortices appears. Below the threshold, the stationary flow on the bubble surface is impossible. The experimental results indicate that the assumption about the axial symmetry of the motion on the bubble surface containing surfactants, which is used in most theoretical and numerical studies, is invalid. Analysis of the results has revealed the most likely reason for the spiral form of the trajectory in the problem of a small rising bubble in the surrounding fluid. For the surfactant-free surface realized in the experiments with isopropyl alcohol, the rising trajectory was a straight line, and no vortex structures were observed on the bubble surface. In the experiments with water, a spiral rising trajectory was observed, and the first instability mode was formed on the bubble surface.