Stokes experiment in a liquid foam.

The paper reports on the quasi-static steady flow of a dry liquid foam around a fixed spherical bead, few times larger than the typical bubble size. The force exerted on the bead is recorded with a precision and a time resolution large enough to show the succession of elastic loading of the foam, separated by sudden force drops. The foam structure is observed by direct light transmission, synchronized with the force measurement, thus allowing to correlate the plastic events with the force variations. Scaling laws for the force signal as a function of the bubble size are detailed and interpreted with a simple elasto-plastic model. The spatial distribution of the plasticity is strongly localized in the first bubbles layers around the bead and the average size of bubble rearrangements increases with the corresponding force jump amplitude.

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Additional Info

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Source https://hal.science/hal-00096574
Author Cantat, Isabelle, Pitois, Olivier
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 5, 2026, 20:52 (UTC)
Created May 5, 2026, 20:52 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00096574
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Groupe matière condensée et matériaux (GMCM) ; Université de Rennes (UR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Cantat, Isabelle
date 2006-09-19T00:00:00
harvest_object_id ac8b6676-6fed-43ab-998a-8f736d503699
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-10-09T00:00:00
relation info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/cond-mat/0609465
set_spec type:UNDEFINED