Hydrodynamics of foams

This brief review article is devoted to all the aspects related to hydrodynamics of foams. For this reason, we focused at first on the methods for studying the basic structural units of the foams-the foam films (FF) and the Plateau borders (PB), thus reviewing the literature about their drainage. After this, we scrutinized in detail the Derjaguin's works on the electrostatic disjoining pressure along with its Langmuir's interpretation, the microscopic and macroscopic approaches in the theory of the van der Waals disjoining pressure, the DLVO theory, the steric disjoining pressure of de Gennes, and the more recent works on non-DLVO forces. The basic methods for studying of foam drainage are presented as well. Engineering and other applications of foam are reviewed as well. All these aspects are presented from retrospective and perspective viewpoints.