Bubble fragmentation in turbulent flow and the potential implications of shear structures for bubbles formed by breaking waves

Large bubbles (1–5 mm radius) are important in a wide range of situations, including air-sea gas transfer, aerosol production as they burst at water surfaces, and the aeration of liquids in bioreactors and other industrial processes. When rising through turbulent flow, these bubbles are commonly distorted and may fragment to form daughter bubbles if their radius exceeds the Hinze scale (at which the restoring force due to surface tension is equal to the forces causing bubble distortion). Here, we present the results of laboratory experiments with fragmentation resulting from bubbles rising through a sheared and turbulent flow. The effects of water temperature, surface tension, local shear rate, and viscous dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy were assessed. Passive acoustical methods produce robust measurements of bubble fragmentation processes, allowing for rapid data collection to generate large data sets. In our experiments, even for bubbles very close to the Hinze scale, the dominant fragmentation mechanism is the capillary-driven fragmentation of elongated bubble filaments. The probability distribution of daughter bubble sizes from a single fragmentation event was independent of temperature, surface tension, and rate of viscous dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy. The overwhelming majority of fragmentation events resulted in one very large and one very small bubble, even for Hinze-scale parent bubbles and low Weber numbers (We < 5.3). Our results suggest that in a turbulent flow, there may be a link between the shear induced by large scale structures and the size of the smallest bubbles produced underneath a breaking wave.