We report on the statistics of bubble size, topology, and shape and on their role in the coarsening dynamics for foams consisting of bubbles compressed between two parallel plates. The design of the sample cell permits control of the liquid content, through a constant pressure condition set by the height of the foam above a liquid reservoir. We find that in the scaling regime, all bubble distributions are independent not only of time, but also of liquid content. For coarsening, the average rate decreases with liquid content due to the blocking of gas diffusion by Plateau borders inflated with liquid; we achieve a factor of 4 reduction from the dry limit. By observing the growth rate of individual bubbles, we find that von Neumann's law becomes progressively violated with increasing wetness and decreasing bubble size. We successfully model this behavior by explicitly incorporating the border-blocking effect into the von Neumann argument. Two dimensionless bubble shape parameters naturally arise, one of which is primarily responsible for the violation of von Neumann's law for foams that are not perfectly dry.

• Received 30 June 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.87.042304