Sliding motion of a bubble against an inclined wall from moderate to high bubble Reynolds number

Christophe Barbosa (1, 2) , Dominique Legendre (1) , Roberto Zenith (2)

1 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse
2 Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales (Mexico, Mexico)

The motion of a bubble sliding over an inclined wall from moderate to high bubble Reynolds number is studied experimentally for a wide range of liquid properties and bubbles sizes, considering wall inclination angles from nearly horizontal to nearly vertical. All experiments are restricted to sliding behavior, below the transition to steady bouncing motion. We study both the shape of the bubble and its drag coefficient. For small angles, the bubble shape is dominated by gravitational effects resulting in a flattened shape against the wall; for large angles, the bubble remains in constant contact with the wall but adopts a shape that is aligned perpendicularly to the wall, closer to that observed for an inertia- dominated free rising bubble. We model this transition of shape considering balances among surface tension, gravitational, and inertial forces; we observe good agreement with experiments. We found that the drag coefficient is strongly influenced by the shape that the bubble adopts as it slides over the wall. By considering the flow in the film and around the bubble, we propose a correlation to predict the drag coefficient for each regime of bubble shape. In the regime dominated by viscous effects, the drag of a single bubble is increased due to the mirror effect with the wall and by the friction in the film formed between the wall; conversely, for the case dominated by inertial effects, the drag coefficient is constant. The behavior for a single bubble is changed: no significant increase due to deformation. In both shape regimes the proposed expression agrees well with the experimental measurements.

Mots clés: Sliding bubble; Inclined wall

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Christophe Barbosa, Dominique Legendre, Roberto Zenith. Sliding motion of a bubble against an inclined wall from moderate to high bubble Reynolds number. Physical Review Fluids, 2019, 4 (4), pp.043602. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevFluids.4.043602⟩. ⟨hal-02640519⟩