Path instabilities of air bubbles rising in clean water

Experiments are conducted to study the path and shape of single air bubbles (diameter range 0.10- 0.20cm) rising freely in clean water. The experimental results demonstrate that the bubble shape has a bistable state, i. e. the bubble chooses to be in spherical or ellipsoidal shape depending on the way that bubbles are generated. The path of a spherical/ellipsoidal bubble is found to change from a straight path to a zigzag/spiral path when bubble diameter exceeds about 0.15 cm.

Publications:

  1. Mingming Wu and Morteza Gharib, Experimental studies  on the shape and path of  small air bubbles rising in clean water ,(pdf file, needs Acrobat Reader 4.0 and above), Physics of Fluids, 14, L49(2002).
  2. Mingming Wu and Morteza Gharib, Experimental investigations on the bistable shape states of small air bubbles rising in clean water , (pdf file) Preprint, 2001.
  3. Mingming Wu and Morteza Gharib, Contamination is not the only way to slow down rising air bubbles , (pdf file) Preprint, 2000.
  4. Mingming Wu and Morteza Gharib, Path instabilities of air bubbles rising in distilled water , (pdf file) Preprint, 1999.
  5. Erin Kelley and Mingming Wu, Path instabilities of air bubbles rising in a Hele-Shaw cell, Phys. Rev. Lett. vol 79, 1265(1997).
  6. Erin Kelley, Zigzag instabilities of air bubbles rising in a Hele-Shaw cell, Thesis, Occidental College, 1997.

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    To view movies of bubbles at detachment, click Movie

    This project is supported by the National Science Foundation (CTS-01201340), the Research Corporation (CC 5367) and the Petroleum Research Fund (ACS-PRF 32904-GB9).