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Franco-Gómez A, Thompson AB, Hazel AL, et al. Bubble propagation on a rail: a concept for sorting bubbles by size. Soft Matter. 2017;13(46):8684-8697doi: 10.1039/c7sm01478c.
Franco-Gómez, A., Thompson, A. B., Hazel, A. L., & Juel, A. (2017). Bubble propagation on a rail: a concept for sorting bubbles by size. Soft matter, 13(46), 8684-8697. https://doi.org/10.1039/c7sm01478c
Franco-Gómez, Andrés, et al. "Bubble propagation on a rail: a concept for sorting bubbles by size." Soft matter vol. 13,46 (2017): 8684-8697. doi: https://doi.org/10.1039/c7sm01478c
Franco-Gómez A, Thompson AB, Hazel AL, Juel A. Bubble propagation on a rail: a concept for sorting bubbles by size. Soft Matter. 2017 Nov 29;13(46):8684-8697. doi: 10.1039/c7sm01478c. PMID: 29125614.
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Soft Matter. 2017 Nov 29;13(46):8684-8697. doi: 10.1039/c7sm01478c.

Bubble propagation on a rail: a concept for sorting bubbles by size.

Soft matter

Andrés Franco-Gómez, Alice B Thompson, Andrew L Hazel, Anne Juel

Affiliations

  1. Manchester Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics & School of Physics & Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. [email protected].

PMID: 29125614 DOI: 10.1039/c7sm01478c

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally that the introduction of a rail, a small height constriction, within the cross-section of a rectangular channel could be used as a robust passive sorting device in two-phase fluid flows. Single air bubbles carried within silicone oil are generally transported on one side of the rail. However, for flow rates marginally larger than a critical value, a narrow band of bubble sizes can propagate (stably) over the rail, while bubbles of other sizes segregate to the side of the rail. The width of this band of bubble sizes increases with flow rate and the size of the most stable bubble can be tuned by varying the rail width. We present a complementary theoretical analysis based on a depth-averaged theory, which is in qualitative agreement with the experiments. The theoretical study reveals that the mechanism relies on a non-trivial interaction between capillary and viscous forces that is fully dynamic, rather than being a simple modification of capillary static solutions.

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