Foam 3D Growth

We have 15 small bubbles inside a liguid. To make them grow move the slider Size. Once the bubbles are big enough to touch each other, the liquid is being pushed towards the edges, struts and nodes. Eventually all or almost all of the mass ends up in the struts and nodes.The cells of the foam are tetrakaidecahedra (14 faces), also known as truncated octahedra, with 4- and 6-edged faces and are one of the Archimedean solids. When you get to the maximum size, you will see a fully open cell foam, with all the mass in the struts and nodes. Now if you move the Opacity slide, you will move some of the mass into wall and see closed cell foam.

To get a better look at the foam at whatever stage of the growth and from whatever angles interest you, use your mouse to zoom in, rotate (left click) and pan (right click).

The three key features are:

1. The foam walls (or faces) make up the bulk of the surface area of each bubble but account for a tiny % of the foam material.
2. The struts (or Plateau borders) contain a large fraction of the foam material. Material drainage runs along these borders when the foam is growing. The borders are curved triangles in cross-section.
3. The nodes or vertices - these are where the struts meet. In reality they have a size bigger than just the borders coming together.
4. Despite appearances, pure PU materials are usually transparent.That is why you will see some outlines of struts at the back of the foam through the struts in the front. Foams looks opague due to light scattering by different structural elements of the foams. They scatter incoming light into all directions. You will probably notice that even foams with the same formulation sometimes differ in colour. the finer the foam, the lighter it looks. Even with your own eyes you can see which foam have better thermal conductivity !