Foam 3D

We have 15 bubbles assembled into a small blob of foam. The bubbles are tetrakaidecahedra (14 faces), also known as truncated octahedra, with 4- and 6-edged faces and are one of the Archimedean solids. They are able to tesselate, to fill space. Lord Kelvin pointed out that they made a good approximation to an ideal foam, and so this foam is called a Kelvin foam. A more perfect foam was defined by Denis Weaire and Robert Phelan, but the Weaire-Phelan foam (made of a dodecahedron and a different tetrakaedecahedron with a mix of 5- and 6-edged faces). Despite the kind help of Guy Inchbald, an expert in 3D shapes, I decided not to implement one because for our purposes, the Kelvin foam is good enough.

To get a feel for what a foam is, use your mouse to zoom in, rotate (left click) and pan (right click) so you can see the foam from whatever angles interest you. You can also slide the Opacity and Width sliders to obtain the desired view.

The three key features are:

1. The foam faces. They make up the bulk of the surface area of each bubble but account for a tiny % of the foam material.
2. The Plateau borders, or just edges which are called (wrongly in the opinion of many) struts in the PU world. These run along the edges and contain a large fraction of the foam material. Foam drainage runs along these borders. The borders are curved triangles in cross-section. I can't create the exact form but when you zoom in you see some triangular cross-sections to remind you.
3. The nodes or vertices. These are where the Plateau borders meet. In reality they have a size bigger than just the borders coming together, but I don't know how to add those shapes to the 3D model.