Rheology of fire-fighting foams

This paper examines the rheological properties of compressed-air foams and contains velocity profiles of foams flowing through straight horizontal tubes. It is shown that a master equation can be derived from the experimental data to account for a range of expansion ratios and pressures normally encountered during pumping of polyhedral-in-structure fire-fighting foams. The experimental data come from a Poiseuille-flow rheometer consisting of three stainless steel tubes 6.95, 9.9, 15.8 mm in diameter, with foam generated by mixing a pressurised solution of Class A foam with compressed air. Results are corrected for wall slip following the method of Oldroyd-Jastrzebski, which implies the dependence of slip coefficients on the curvature of the tube wall. The experimental results demonstrate the applicability of the volume equalisation method to the more expanded, polyhedral (ε>5) and transition, bubbly-to-polyhedral (5⩾ε⩾4) foams. (The method of volume equalisation was introduced by Valkó and Economides to correlate the viscosity of low expansion foams (ε<4), characterised by spherical bubbles.) The present results indicate that all data points align themselves along two master curves, depending on whether the foam consists of bubbles or polyhedral cells.