Foams & Emulsions

This Topical Team aims at investigating the properties of soft materials such as Foams and Emulsions in microgravity. Foams are suspensions of bubbles of gas in a liquid. On earth only foams with a small content of liquid are stable, while more wet foams are unstable because of drainage, the sedimentation of water due to gravity. Therefore, this Topical Team aims at investigating wet foams on the ISS using an instrument called Soft Matter Dynamics (SMD) which enables the study of such systems. The team is especially interested in coarsening events which are masked on ground by the drainage. Similarly, emulsions are dispersions of two immiscible fluids such as oil and water. On earth the two liquids separate because of gravity, giving rase to creaming. The science team is interested in performing experiments on SMD to study effects of coalescence and coarsening disentangled by creaming.