Soap film vibration: origin of the dissipation

Abstract

We investigate the complex dispersion relationship of a transverse antisymmetric wave on a horizontal soap film. Experimentally, the complex wave number k at a fixed forcing frequency is determined by measuring the vibrating amplitude of the soap film: the wavelength (linked to the real part of k) is determined by the spatial variation of the amplitude; the decay length (linked to the imaginary part of k) is determined by analyzing the resonance curves of the vibrating wave as a function of frequency. Theoretically, we compute the complex dispersion relationship taking into account the physical properties of the bulk liquid and gas phase, and of the gas–liquid interfaces. The comparison between the computation (developed to the leading order under our experimental conditions) and the experimental results confirms that the phase velocity is fixed by the interplay between surface tension, and liquid and air inertia, as reported in previous studies. Moreover, we show that the attenuation of the transverse antisymmetric wave originates from the viscous dissipation in the gas phase surrounding the liquid film. This result is an important step in understanding the propagation of an acoustic wave in liquid foam, using a bottom-up approach.