title: Multiscale modeling of membrane rearrangement, drainage, and rupture in evolving foams.
abstract: Modeling the physics of foams and foamlike materials, such as soapy froths, fire retardants, and lightweight crash-absorbent structures, presents challenges, because of the vastly different time and space scales involved. By separating and coupling these disparate scales, we have designed a multiscale framework to model dry foam dynamics. This leads to a predictive and flexible computational methodology linking, with a few simplifying assumptions, foam drainage, rupture, and topological rearrangement, to coupled interface-fluid motion under surface tension, gravity, and incompressible fluid dynamics. Our computed results match theoretical analyses and experimentally observed physical effects, including thin-film drainage and interference, and are used to study bubble rupture cascades and macroscopic rearrangement. The developed multiscale model allows quantitative computation of complex foam evolution phenomena.
authors: Department of Mathematics and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors: Robert I
authors: RI
authors: Saye
authors: James A
authors: JA
authors: Sethian