Soft-lubrication effect on the lateral migration of a slightly deformed bubble rising near a vertical plane wall

Abstract

Deformation-induced lateral migration of a bubble slowly rising near a vertical plane wall in a stagnant liquid is numerically and theoretically investigated. In particular, our focus is set on a situation with a small clearance $c$ between the bubble interface and the wall. Motivated by the fact that experimentally measured migration velocity (Takemura et al. (2002, J. Fluid Mech. {\bf 461}, 277)) is higher than the velocity estimated by the available analytical solution (Magnaudet et al. (2003, J. Fluid Mech. {\bf 476}, 115)) using the Fax\'{e}n mirror image technique for $\kappa(=a/(a+c))\ll 1$ (here $a$ is the bubble radius), when the clearance parameter $\epsilon(=c/a)$ is comparable to or smaller than unit, the numerical analysis based on the boundary-fitted finite-difference approach by solving the Stokes equation is performed to complement the experiment. To improve the understandings of a role of the squeezing flow within the bubble-wall gap, the theoretical analysis based on a soft-lubrication approach (Skotheim & Mahadevan (2004, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 92}, 245509)) is also performed. The present analyses demonstrate the migration velocity scales $\propto{\rm Ca}\ \epsilon^{-1}V_{B1}$ (here, $V_{B1}$ and ${\rm Ca}$ denote the rising velocity and the capillary number, respectively) in the limit of $\epsilon\to 0$.