Dissolution Arrest and Stability of Armored Bubbles
Manouk Abkarian, Anand Bala Subramaniam, Shin-Hyun Kim, Ryan Larsen, Seung-Man Yang, Howard A. Stone
Abstract
Dissolving armored bubbles stabilize with nonspherical shapes by jamming the initially Brownian particles adsorbed on their interfaces. In a gas-saturated solution, these shapes are characterized by planar facets or folds for decreasing ratios of the particle to bubble radii. We perform numerical simulations that mimic dissolution, and show that the faceted shape represents a local minimum of energy during volume reduction. This minimum is marked by the vanishing of the Laplace overpressure
ΔP
, which together with the existence of a
V
-interval where
dΔP/dV>0
guarantees stability against dissolution. The reduction of
ΔP
is due to the saddle-shape deformation of most of the interface which accompanies the reduction in the mean curvature of the interface.