Intermittent outgassing through a non-Newtonian fluid

Bubble dynamics inside an outgassing hydrogel confined in a Hele-Shaw cell

We report an experimental study of bubble dynamics in a non-Newtonian fluid subjected to a pressure decrease. The fluid is a hydrogel, composed of water and a synthetic clay, prepared and sandwiched between two glass plates in a Hele-Shaw geometry. The rheological properties of the material can be tuned by the clay concentration. As the imposed pressure decreases, the gas initially dissolved in the hydrogel triggers bubble formation. Different stages of the process are observed: bubble nucleation, growth, interaction, and creation of domains by bubble contact or coalescence. Initially bubble behave independently. They are trapped and advected by the mean deformation of the hydrogel, and the bubble growth is mainly driven by the diffusion of the dissolved gas through the hydrogel and its outgassing at the reactive-advected hydrogel-bubble interface. In this regime, the rheology of the fluid does not play a significant role on the bubble growth. A model is proposed and gives a simple scaling that relates the bubble growth rate and the imposed pressure. Carbon dioxide is shown to be the gas at play, and the hydrogel is degassing at the millimeter scale as a water solution does at a smaller scale. Later, bubbles are not independent anymore. The growth rate decreases, and the morphology becomes more anisotropic as bubbles interact because they are separated by a distance smaller than the individual stress field extension. Our measurements show that the interaction distance scales with the bubbles' size.

On-off intermittency over an extended range of control parameter

We propose a simple phenomenological model exhibiting on-off intermittency over an extended range of control parameter. We find that the distribution of the "off" periods has a power-law tail with an exponent varying continuously between -1 and -2, at odds with standard on-off intermittency which occurs at a specific value of the control parameter and leads to the exponent -3/2. This nontrivial behavior results from the competition between a strong slowing down of the dynamics at small values of the observable and a systematic drift toward large values.

Degassing cascades in a shear-thinning viscoelastic fluid

We report the experimental study of the degassing dynamics through a thin layer of shear-thinning viscoelastic fluid when a constant air flow is imposed at its bottom. The fluid is an aqueous solution of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and sodium salicylate (NaSal). Over a large range of parameters, the air is periodically released through a series of successive bubbles, hereafter named cascades. Each cascade is followed by a continuous degassing, lasting for several seconds, corresponding to an open channel crossing the fluid layer. The periodicity between two cascades does not depend on the injected flow rate. Inside one cascade, the properties of the overpressure signal associated with the successive bubbles vary continuously. The pressure threshold above which the fluid starts flowing, fluid deformation and pressure drop due to degassing through the thin fluid layer can be simply described by a Maxwell model.

Venting dynamics of an immersed granular layer

Air is injected locally at the base of an immersed granular bed. The gas, which is forced to flow gently through the material, creates several paths between the grains. We observe that the latter gas venting results in the emission of bubbles in a localized region at the free surface. Additional experiments, performed in two dimensions, permit a direct visualization of the paths, and a theoretical approach shows that the typical size of the region at the free surface can be accounted for by a diffusionlike process. The diffusion coefficient is expressed as a function of the system parameters.

Acoustic waveform of continuous bubbling in a non-Newtonian fluid

We study experimentally the acoustic signal associated with a continuous bubble bursting at the free surface of a non-Newtonian fluid. Due to the fluid rheological properties, the bubble shape is elongated, and, when bursting at the free surface, acts as a resonator. For a given fluid concentration, at constant flow rate, repetitive bubble bursting occurs at the surface. We report a modulation pattern of the acoustic waveform through time. Moreover, we point out the existence of a precursor acoustic signal, recorded on the microphone array, previous to each bursting. The time delay between this precursor and the bursting signal is well correlated with the bursting signal frequency content. Their joint modulation through time is driven by the fluid rheology, which strongly depends on the presence of small satellite bubbles trapped in the fluid due to the yield stress.

Transition by intermittency in granular matter: from discontinuous avalanches to continuous flow

We investigate, in the rotating drum configuration, the transition from the regime of discontinuous avalanches observed at low angular velocity to the regime of continuous flow observed at higher velocity. Instead of the hysteretic transition reported previously by Rajchenbach [Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 2221 (1990)], with an apparent bistability of the two flow regimes in a range of drum velocities, we observe intermittency with spontaneous erratic switches from one regime to the other. Both scenarios of transition are recovered by a model dynamic equation for the avalanche flow with two sources of stochasticity: a Langevin noise during the avalanche flow and a distributed maximal stability angle at which avalanches start.