Abstract

We investigate continuous generation of bubbles from a bath of air in viscous liquid in a confined geometry. In our original setup, bubbles are spontaneously generated by virtue of buoyancy and a gate placed in the cell: the gate acts like an inverted funnel trapping air beneath it before continuously generating bubbles at the tip. The dynamics is characterized by the period of the bubble formation and the size of bubbles as a function of the amount of air under the gate. By analyzing the data obtained for various parameters, we successfully identified in a clear manner that the dynamics of the bubble formation is governed by dissipation in thin films whose thickness is determined by Derjaguin's law balanced by a gravitational energy change due to buoyancy, after examining numerous possibilities of dissipation, demonstrating the potential of scaling analysis even in extremely complex cases. Furthermore, we uncover a novel type of pinch-off condition, which convincingly explains the size of the bubble created: in the present case viscosity plays a vital role beyond the conventional mechanism of Tate in which gravity competes with capillarity, revealing a general mechanism of pinching-off at low Reynolds number. Accordingly, the present study significantly and fundamentally advance our knowledge of bubble generation and bubble pinch-off in a clear manner with the results relevant for a wide variety of applications in many fields. In particular, the present study demonstrates a new avenue in microfluidics for understanding physical principles by scaling up the system, without losing the characters of the flow at low Reynolds numbers.