Chaotic bubblewheel

A cylindrical body floating atop a supersaturated fluid, like carbonated water, may accumulate bubbles along its underbelly, which can render the body unstable to rotation. Rotation, however, strips the surface of these bubbles. Using experiments and numerical simulations, we show regimes of constant rolling, periodic and aperiodic oscillation, and chaos, which can be tuned by body size, mass distribution, surface properties, fluid viscosity, or gas concentration. The system is so-named due to its connection to the Malkus waterwheel, and reveals a similar connection to the celebrated Lorenz system. The mass distribution inside the body is shown to have a dramatic impact on the body dynamics, which may offer insight into geophysical and other larger scale, and much smaller scale, phenomena.