Deformation and stability of a gas bubble in a biaxial straining flow

TL;DR

This study uses a novel computational framework to analyze how gas bubbles deform and remain stable in biaxial flows, revealing bifurcations, stable shapes, and potential breakup mechanisms related to viscous and capillary effects.

Contribution

It introduces a new analysis of bubble stability and shape bifurcations in biaxial flows using the L-ALE framework, uncovering stable and unstable equilibrium shapes and modes.

Findings

Bifurcation with different equilibrium shapes depending on Ohnesorge number

Existence of stable and unstable bubble shapes beyond spherical solutions

Identification of modes potentially leading to bubble breakup

Abstract

Taking advantage of the recently developed L-ALE framework [Sierra-Ausin \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Fluids {\bf{7}}, 113603 (2022)], we characterize the linear dynamics of an incompressible gas bubble immersed in a biaxial straining flow. We show that the system undergoes a saddle-node bifurcation with strongly different equilibrium shapes when varying the Ohnesorge number, $\Oh$, which compares viscous and capillary effects. Equilibrium shapes are found to be oblate for sufficiently large $\Oh$ while, counter-intuitively, they are prolate for low-enough $\Oh$. The bifurcation diagram is found to contain also two sets of disconnected branches that cannot be obtained by continuation starting from a spherical shape. One set corresponds to bubble shapes expected to be unstable, while the second set comprises a wide region exhibiting stable shapes that might be observed in practice. We then characterize the linear stability of the various branches. In addition to the unstable axisymmetric mode arising at the saddle-node bifurcation, two non-oscillating drift modes are also identified, together with a new unstable non-oscillating mode with azimuthal wave number $m=2$. This mode might be responsible for some type of bubble breakup observed in experiments.