Topology of slightly polydisperse real foams

The topology of slightly polydisperse, (meta-)stable, real foams was investigated by means of optical tomography associated with a numerical reconstruction procedure. The values of the mean numbers of faces per bubble and edges per face were very close to Matzke's data (1946). The real foams were essentially disordered and possessed a noncentered symmetry, and ideal structures also could not be observed. The disorder was quantified by the second moment of the edge per face and face per bubble distributions, and also by a statistical correlation coefficient between the numbers of edges of adjacent faces. It was found that the edge distributions of the internal bubbles, and not of the external ones, were significantly anticorrelated even during foam aging, which provided a measure of the disorder in the foam. No obvious relationship could be deduced between the isoperimetric quotient and the face combination in an individual bubble. Eventually, it was shown that the physical boundaries of the foam sample had no influence on the foam topology beyond a single bubble layer.