Regimes of bubble suction from a needle submerged in a very viscous liquid*

The contraction dynamics of a static pendant bubble pinned at the edge of a needle and immersed in a quiescent viscous liquid is investigated by means of numerical simulations at constant suction flow rate in the Stokes limit. Through a systematic parametric study we aim at establishing the critical conditions for the formation of satellite bubbles in the parametric space spanned by the three relevant parameters of the problem, namely the Bond number, the capillary number and the dimensionless initial volume. An experimental study is under way to verify the numerical findings.