Surface Tension of Flowing Soap Films

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Surface Tension of Flowing Soap Films Surface Tension of Flowing Soap Films Aakash Sane School of Engineering Brown University Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in the School of Engineering at Brown University This thesis by Aakash Sane is accepted in its present form by the School of Engineering (Fluids and Thermal Sciences) as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of Master of Science. SHREYAS MANDRE, Thesis Advisor Signature Date ANDREW G. CAMPBELL, Dean of Graduate School Signature Date AUTHORIZATION TO LEND AND REPRODUCE THE THESIS As the sole author of this thesis, I authorize Brown University to lend it to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. AAKASH SANE, Author Signature Date I further authorize Brown University to reproduce this thesis by photocopy- ing or other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. AAKASH SANE, Author Signature Date Abstract We investigate the relation of surface tension of the flowing soap films with respect to flow parameters such as the flow speed, width of the film and concentration of the soap solution. We use a relation between surface tension and curvature of the bounding wires to measure surface tension. Our measurements indicate that the surface tension is 0.027 N/m for soap films made using commonly used soap (Dawn dishwashing soap). For dilute solutions, the surface tension value increases as film becomes thinner. This increase may be understood by noting that thinning of the film is equivalent to dilution of the solution. A thinner film has greater surface area to volume ratio and adsorpion of soap molecules to the surface decreases the bulk concentration thereby diluting the solution. Our results not only shed light on a previous unknown feature of constant surface tension of flowing soap films but also support the claim that the elasticity of flowing soap films does not vary significantly. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Shreyas Mandre for accepting me as his student and providing his valuable time advising me on this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Ildoo Kim for guiding me during experiments and helping me to understand soap films. I would also like to thank Prerna Patil for assisting me in experiments. Also, a fresh pair of eyes provided by Dr. Harsh Soni were valuable in making this thesis a bit more comprehen- sible. Dedication Dedicated to my parents, without their love and care I would have achieved nothing. Contents 1 Introduction1 1.1 Introduction....................................1 1.2 Soap Films....................................2 1.3 Surface Tension..................................3 1.4 Marangoni Effect in Soap Films.........................4 1.5 Elasticity of Soap Films.............................5 1.6 Uses of Soap Films and their Three Dimensional Nature...........6 2 Measuring Surface tension9 2.1 Experimental setup................................9 2.2 Method to Measure the Surface Tension.................... 10 3 Results and Discussion 15 3.1 Results....................................... 15 3.2 Error analysis................................... 15 3.3 Discussion..................................... 19 3.4 Conclusion..................................... 19 A 21 A.1 Relation between surface tension and curvature................ 21 A.2 Relation between Elasticity and the Marangoni Wave Speed......... 25 Bibliography 26 List of Figures 1.1 Soap films.....................................3 1.2 Cross section of a typical soap film. The hatched area has soap solution and the interfaces have soap molecules acting as surfactants. The wires, shown as gray shaded circles, hold the film. The slab of film attaches itself to the wires and this region is called as plateau border (Rutgers et al.[2001]).......3 1.3 The molecule at the surface has less energy than the one in the bulk (de Gennes et al.[2004])....................................3 1.4 Cross sectional slab of a soap film. Thinning gives rise to spatial variation of surface tension. The increased surface tension in the gray shaded region pulls fluid back into it and restores the film to its original thickness. This effect is called as the Marangoni effect...........................5 2.1 Sketch of soap film setup. Overhead tank is filled with soap solution of certain concentration. The solution flows through a valve and flows between the nylon wires creating a soap film. The nylon wires are pulled apart from corners marked as A, B, C, and D. A suspended weight at the bottom maintains the nylon wires vertical and imparts tension in the nylon wires. The drained solution is collected at the bottom in a container (no shown in figure)..... 10 2.2 The central two white wires which are bent inwards are the bounding wires. 11 2.3 50 points picked manually, shown in cyan. These points act as a guide to the code to recognize the wire............................. 12 2.4 3000 points recognized by code based on 50 points picked manually, shown in red. The code identifies these points based on maximum intensity...... 13 2.5 Zoomed image of the points recognized by code................. 14 3.1 Surface tension w.r.t to the flow rate per unit width for different concentrations of soap solution. σ stands for surface tension, q is the flow rate of the soap solution, and w is the width of the soap film. The quantity q=w has been used on the x-axis because flow rate per unit width is a direct indication of thickness of the soap film. Thickness increases with increase in q=w...... 16 3.2 Portion of wire with f(x) (blue color) and g(x) (red color) superimposed. g(x) represents the wire recognized by computer code. f(x) is the quadratic polynomial fitted onto g(x). The difference between g(x) and f(x) is a source of error....................................... 17 3.3 Surface tension σ with error in surface tension Esurf plotted along the length of the soap film. Surface tension seems not to follow any fixed pattern along the length of the soap film............................ 18 3.4 Surface Concentration of soap molecules absorbed at the surface vs bulk con- centration of the soap film [Couder et al., 1989]. Curve is for SDS, but it can be qualitatively used for any kind of surfactant solution. The curve shows the surface concentration approaching a constant value for high bulk concentra- tion values (shown as B-C). Our results show that we are in the B-C region of this curve and our proposed relation (eq. 3.3) captures this regime..... 20 A.1 Forces on infinitesimal wire element....................... 22 A.2 Cross section of the film in y-z direction. Control volume shown by dashed rectangle. Pressure at point B, PB, is different than Patm due to laplace pressure difference but our control volume extends till point A avoiding the need to calculate pressure at point B. Surface tension σ is same at A and B because there is no flow along y-direction.................... 23 A.3 Control volume used to derive wave speed in soap films. Wave front in the center........................................ 25 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction Soap films are considered as two-dimensional fluids and have been used by the fluid dynamics community to understand two dimensional phenomenon such as 2D turbulence, flapping of flags, etc. Although the soap films have been assumed to be two-dimensional, they are known to exhibit thickness changes which make the films three-dimensional. The three dimensional effects can be characterized by the elasticity or the surface tension of the soap film. In a recent work by Kim and Mandre[2016] elasticity of the soap films has been found to be constant and they speculated that the surface of the soap film is saturated with soap molecules. The aim of the present work is two fold - to measure and understand surface tension of flowing soap films with respect to flow parameters and to investigate the claim of saturated soap film surface made by Kim and Mandre[2016]. Measuring surface tension of a soap film is particularly difficult because existing mea- surement techniques intrude the soap film or use a sample of solution which involves changing the geometry. These measurement techniques are unfavorable as they will change the sur- face tension due to the Marangoni effect. To overcome this difficulty, we have developed a 1 non-intrusive technique, for which we have derived a relation between the surface tension and the deflection of nylon wires which hold the flowing soap films. Chapter 1 starts with introducing soap films and explains the Marangoni effect which causes stability and 2D compressibility. The uses of soap films and the work of Kim and Mandre[2016] have been stated in chapter 1. The difficulty in measuring surface tension using traditional techniques has been identified in chapter 1. Chapter 2 explains our novel and non-intrusive technique to measure surface tension. The results of our experiments are presented in Chapter 3 which includes the discussion of our results. 1.2 Soap Films Soap films are observed everyday in the form of soap bubbles, foams, etc. and are not only visually appealing but also fun to play with. Soap films are thin sheets of liquid surrounded by air on both sides of its interface. The interface consists of layers of soap molecules and the interstitial fluid is sandwiched between these two layers of surfactants. These layers of surfactants makes the formation of soap bubbles possible as opposed to making bubbles from pure water. An attempt to make bubbles out of pure water is futile because they will burst instantaneously. Thin liquid sheets made using pure water are unstable and break up as documented by Savart (Lin[2003]) while observing the edge of a moving liquid sheet with air on both sides.
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