Théorique, numérique
Liquid foams, concentrated dispersions of gas bubbles in a liquid matrix, have many applications such as detergency, flotation and oil recovery. Understanding and controlling their stability is necessary for applications. Coarsening is one of the destabilization processes of liquid foams. It is due to the transfer of gas between bubbles caused by pressure differences. New experimental elements have recently been obtained during experiments carried out on board the International Space Station, in microgravity conditions. This work made it possible to understand how coarsening changes from “dry foams” to “bubble suspensions” (by increasing the liquid fraction) crossing a jamming transition. In this context, numerical simulations could favor additional progress, by establishing the missing link between the coarsening laws and the evolution of the microstructure of the bubble assembly. The objective of this internship is to study via discrete numerical simulations how coarsening is affected by structural change near the jamming transition. For this aim, discrete particle models will be developed, which incorporate the minimal ingredients to describe interactions and gas transfer between bubbles.