3D printed Helium-Filled Soap Bubble Generators

[Erich's Lab]

Hi all,

When I was working on low Re vortices with helical vortex breakdowns slightly above ground boundary, I encountered an issue with my current setup. I am using two 2.1 MP monochrome sensors from arducam with a CS lens adapter, a CW laser module, and an Arduino as a external trigger. The seeding particles are vaporized glycerin water mixture with an average particle diameter of approximately 8 microns. However, due to a large-ish region of interest, the seeding particles are too small causing numerous outliers and subpixel bias towards integer values. According to a few papers I read, it seems feasible to 3D print a helium-filed soap bubble generator capable of generating bubbles of up to 1 millimeter. Has anyone tried and or had success with these 3D printed seeding modules?

Notable articles:

Gibeau, Bradley & Ghaemi, Sina. (2018). A modular, 3D-printed helium-filled soap bubble generator for large-scale volumetric flow measurements. Experiments in Fluids. 59. 10.1007/s00348-018-2634-9.

Gibeau, Bradley & Gingras, Drew & Ghaemi, Sina. (2020). Evaluation of a full-scale helium-filled soap bubble generator. Experiments in Fluids. 61. 10.1007/s00348-019-2853-8.