Pitois Olivier

Production and study of advanced fluid/solid foams.

Dedicated methods allow for aqueous foams to be produced with controlled morphological features, i.e. bubble size (as monodisperse or multimodal distribution) and gas volume fraction, as well as controlled composition of the interstitial material (matrix between the bubbles). The latter can be made of polymers, granular or colloidal particle suspensions, dilute or concentrated oil-in-water emulsions, as well as mixed polymer/particle suspensions, with inert or functional particles. We produce both model systems and materials with practical (industrial) interest, such polyurethane foams, cement or geopolymer foams. Most of the foamed materials can be produced as bulk materials or as coatings, and they will be useful for  various application fields, such as tissue engineering (using polymer gels), thermal and acoustical insulation materials or filtering (using mineral particle suspensions).

Properties of foams are studied: foam stability (drainage/coalescence/ripening) and rheology of fluid/fresh foams, mechanical behavior of stiff or soft solid foams, acoustics, flow permeability, imbibition/sorption properties. Numerical foams with realistic morphology are generated and are used for estimating various properties (elasticity, permeability for example).