RESUMEN
Mixing solid particles with liquid foam is a common process used in industry for manufacturing aerated materials. Desire for improvement of involved industrial processes and optimization of resulting foamed materials stimulates fundamental research on those complex mixtures of grains, bubbles and liquid. In this paper, we generate well-controlled particle-loaded liquid foams and we determine their elastic behavior as a function of particle size (6-3000 µm) and particle volume fraction (0-6%). We focus on both the elastic modulus exhibited by the material at small strain and the strain marking the end of the linear elastic regime. Results reveal the existence of a critical particle-to-bubble size ratio triggering a sharp transition between two well-defined regimes. For small size ratios, the behavior is governed by the mechanical properties of the solid grains, which have been proved to pack in the shape of a foam-embedded granular skeleton. In contrast, bubbles elasticity prevails in the second regime, where isolated large particles contribute only weakly to the rheological behavior of the foamed material. The modeling of elasticity for each regime allows for this transition to be normalized and compared with previously reported particle size-induced effects for foam drainage (Haffner et al. J. Colloid Interface Sci., 2015, 458, 200-208) and solid foam mechanics (Khidas et al., Compos. Sci. Technol., 2015, 119, 62-67). This highlights that rheology and the other properties of particle-loaded foams are subjected to the same size-induced morphological transition.
RESUMEN
Foams made of complex fluids such as particle suspensions have a great potential for the development of advanced aerated materials. In this paper, we study the rheological behavior of liquid foams loaded with granular suspensions. We focus on the effect of small particles, i.e., particle-to-bubble size ratio smaller than 0.1, and we measure the complex modulus as a function of particle size and particle volume fraction. With respect to previous work, the results highlight a new elastic regime characterized by unequaled modulus values as well as independence of size ratio. A careful investigation of the material microstructure reveals that particles organize through the network between the gas bubbles and form a granular skeleton structure with tightly packed particles. The latter is proven to be responsible for the reported new elastic regime. Rheological probing performed by strain sweep reveals a two-step yielding of the material: The first one occurs at small strain and is clearly attributed to yielding of the granular skeleton; the second one corresponds to the yielding of the bubble assembly, as observed for particle-free foams. Moreover, the elastic modulus measured at small strain is quantitatively described by models for solid foams in assuming that the granular skeleton possesses a bulk elastic modulus of order 100 kPa. Additional rheology experiments performed on the bulk granular material indicate that this surprisingly high value can be understood as soon as the magnitude of the confinement pressure exerted by foam bubbles on packed grains is considered.
RESUMEN
Elasticity of soft materials can be greatly influenced by the presence of air bubbles. Such a capillary effect is expected for a wide range of materials, from polymer gels to concentrated emulsions and colloidal suspensions. Whereas experimental results and theory exist for describing the elasto-capillary behavior of bubbly materials (i.e. with moderate gas volume fractions), foamy systems still require a dedicated study in order to increase our understanding of elasticity in aerated materials over the full range of gas volume fractions. Here we elaborate well-controlled foams with concentrated emulsion and we measure their shear elastic modulus as a function of gas fraction, bubble size and elastic modulus of the emulsion. Such complex foams possess the elastic features of both the bubble assembly and the interstitial matrix. Moreover, their elastic modulus is shown to be governed by two parameters, namely the gas volume fraction and the elasto-capillary number, defined as the ratio of the emulsion modulus with the bubble capillary pressure. We connect our results for foams with existing data for bubbly systems and we provide a general view for the effect of gas bubbles in soft elastic media. Finally, we suggest that our results could be useful for estimating the shear modulus of aqueous foams and emulsions with multimodal size distributions.
