Inertial thinning of liquid sheets due to surfactants

The thinning of liquid sheets due to Marangoni effects are of interest in the environment, industry, and healthcare. In particular, localised surface tension gradients have been suggested as a mechanism for how the cap of a bubble may rupture (Néel and Villermaux 2018 JFM), which is relevant for sea spray aerosol formation via bubble bursting. In this talk, we present the thinning of a liquid sheet (air-liquid-air) due to a localised deposition of surfactant where we focus on the regime in which inertia and Marangoni effects are in the dominant balance. Such a regime is likely to be relevant for water films. The thinning dynamics and resulting capillary waves are described in detail through the identification of suitable similarity solutions, which are compared with numerical solutions to the thin film equations.

This work was supported by NSF grant 2242512 and NSF CAREER 1844932 to L.D. and NSF grant 2127563 to H.A.S.