Foam drainage placed on a thin porous layer

Abstract

Drainage of foams placed on porous substrates has only recently been theoretically investigated (O. Arjmandi-Tash, N. Kovalchuk, A. Trybala, V. Starov, Foam Drainage Placed on a Porous Substrate, Soft Matter, 2015, 11(18), 3643–3652), where an equation describing foam drainage (with non-slip boundary conditions on the liquid–air interfaces) was combined with that of imbibition of liquid into the thick porous substrate. Foam-based applications have been used as a method of drug delivery, which is a recent and promising area of research related to application of medicinal products onto the skin or hair, which are both thin porous layers. A theory of foam drainage (taking into account surface viscosity) placed on a completely wettable thin porous layer is developed: the rate of foam drainage and imbibition inside the porous layer and other characteristics of the process are predicted. The “effective slip” caused by the surface viscosity increased a movement of the top boundary of the foam. The theoretical predictions are compared with experimental observations of foam drainage placed on thin porous layers. The comparison showed a reasonable agreement between the theoretical predictions and experimental observations. One of the phenomena during foam application is the possibility of a build-up of a free liquid layer on the foam/porous layer interface, which can be very useful for applications. Three different regimes of spreading/imbibition process have been predicted. Conditions and durations of free liquid layer formation have been theoretically predicted and compared with experimental observations.