Abstract below
Adrien Bussonnière
Matière et Systèmes Complexes. CNRS. Université Paris Cité.
Bursting of large soap films
Soap films vanish in the blink of an eye through a succession of highly violent events. Their rupture begins with the formation of a hole that expands within just a few milliseconds. High-speed imaging reveals a local thickening of the film, named the aureole, that forms ahead of the opening. This structure reflects a strong compression of the surfactant-laden interface. Within the aureole, surface-tension gradients generate Marangoni flows that trigger a cascade of instabilities, ultimately leading to film atomization.
In this seminar, after a brief overview of soap-film dynamics, we will focus on the influence of surfactant dynamics on the aureole. Combining experiments and modeling, we will show how surfactant desorption, an overlooked mechanism, shapes the aureole, its flow, and the subsequent instabilities. Finally, we show that key physicochemical parameters of the monolayer can be extracted from the aureole dynamics, paving the way toward high-frequency interfacial rheology and improved understanding of surfactant adsorption.
