Coalescence preference in densely packed microbubbles

Abstract

A bubble merged from two parent bubbles with different size tends to be placed closer to the larger parent. This phenomenon is known as the coalescence preference . Here we demonstrate that the coalescence preference can be blocked inside a densely packed cluster of bubbles. We utilized high-speed high-resolution X-ray microscopy to clearly visualize individual coalescence events inside densely packed microbubbles with a local packing fraction of ~40%. Thus, the surface energy release theory predicts an exponent of 5 in a relation between the relative coalescence position and the parent size ratio, whereas our observation for coalescence in densely packed microbubbles shows a different exponent of 2. We believe that this result would be important to understand the reality of coalescence dynamics in a variety of packing situations of soft matter.