How bees and foams respond to curved confinement: Level set boundary representations in the Surface Evolver

We investigate the equilibrium properties of a single area-minimising bubble trapped between two narrowly-separated parallel curved plates. We begin with the simple case of a bubble trapped between concentric spherical plates. We develop a model that shows that the surface tension energy of the bubble is lower when confined between spherical plates as compared to a bubble trapped between flat plates. We confirm our findings by comparing against Surface Evolver simulations. Next, we derive a simple model for a bubble between arbitrarily curved parallel plates. The energy is found to be higher when the local Gaussian curvature of the plates is negative and lower when the curvature is positive. To check the validity of the model we consider a bubble trapped between concentric tori. In the toroidal case we find that the sensitivity of the bubble's energy to the local curvature acts as a geometric potential capable of driving bubbles from regions with negative to positive curvature. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.