CHAOTIC BUBBLE COALESCENCE IN NON-NEWTONIAN FLUIDS

This work aims at studying in-line bubble coalescence in non-Newtonian fluids. The visualisation and power spectrum of time series data, rec orded via an optical sensing device, confirm that the bubble formation at the orifice is perfectly periodic under a constant gas flowrate. H owever, the separation interval between bubbles becomes irregular duri ng rise, until, at a certain height above the orifice, the coalescence occurs. An original approach is elaborated by relating the rise of a chain of bubbles to consecutive shear deformations. A series of measur ements on a rheometer proves for the first time that the bubble coales cence is mainly governed by the dynamical competition between the crea tion and relaxation of shear stresses. The time delay embedding method of reconstructing the phase-space diagram is applied to time series d ata recorded at different heights in the bubble column. The calculatio n of several parameters: the largest Lyapunov exponent, the correlatio n dimension, the power spectrum, and the phase portraits, reveals that the coalescence between bubbles obeys a chaotic and deterministic mec hanism. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.