Creeping flow past a fluid globule when a trace of surfactant is present

Abstract

Abstract The effects of a trace quantity of a surface‐active agent on creeping flow past a bubble or droplet are investigated. The equations describing mass and momentum transfer are simultaneously solved by a perturbation technique, consistent with the jump mass and momentum balances at the phase interface. The stream function for the velocity distribution is evaluated as an infinite series of spherical harmonics. Galerkin's method, which reduces the partial differential equation of continuity to a set of ordinary differential equations, is used to evaluate the concentration distribution of surfactant. A sample calculation is carried out for relative motion between an air bubble and an infinite body of water which contains a trace of isoamyl alcohol. The relative velocity of the water at an infinite distance from the bubble is found to be highly sensitive to small changes in surfactant concentration from zero, although the bubble varies imperceptibly from a spherical shape.