The Effect of Surface Geometry of Solid Wall On the Collapse of a Cavitation Bubble

The objective of this paper is to reveal the influence of different surface geometric conditions on the dynamic behavior characteristics of a laser-induced bubble collapse. A high-speed camera system was used to record the oscillation process of the laser-induced bubble on plane solid walls with different roughness and a wall containing reentrant cavities full of water or gas. The focus is on the quantitative analysis of the morphological characteristics of the cavitation bubble near the solid wall under different surface forms during the first two oscillation period. The results show that the dimensionless ratio γ, defined as the distance from the center of the bubble to the wall divided by the maximum radius of the bubble, has a great influence on the change of the cavitation shape in the direction of the vertical wall. Different surface geometries without gas in our cases have no significant effect on the collapse time of cavitation bubbles. While for the surface containing gas, the direction of movement of the bubble accompanying the micro-jet will greatly change during the collapse of the cavitation bubble, and the collapse time seems to be independent of the dimensionless ratio γ. These achievements shed the light for the engineering to avoid the damage of the micro-jet caused by design suitable surface geometry.

Cavitation erosion behavior of hydraulic concrete under high-speed flow

Purpose Cavitation erosion has always been a common technical problem in a hydraulic discharging structure. This paper aims to investigate the cavitation erosion behavior of hydraulic concrete under high-speed flow. Design/methodology/approach A high-speed and high-pressure venturi cavitation erosion generator was used to simulate the strong cavitation. The characteristics of hydrodynamic loads of cavitation bubble collapse zone, the failure characteristics and the erosion development process of concrete were investigated. The main influencing factors of cavitation erosion were discussed. Findings The collapse of the cavitation bubble group produced a high frequency, continuous and unsteady pulse load on the wall of concrete, which was more likely to cause fatigue failure of concrete materials. The cavitation action position and the main frequency of impact load were greatly affected by the downstream pressure. A power exponential relationship between cavitation load, cavitation erosion and flow speed was observed. With the increase of concrete strength, the degree of damage of cavitation erosion was approximately linearly reduced. Originality/value After cavitation erosion, a skeleton structure was formed by the accumulation of granular particles, and the relatively independent bulk structure of the surface differed from the flake structure formed after abrasion.

Interaction of cavitation bubbles with the interface of two immiscible fluids on multiple time scales

We experimentally, numerically and theoretically investigate the nonlinear interaction between a cavitation bubble and the interface of two immiscible fluids (oil and water) on multiple time scales. The underwater electric discharge method is utilized to generate a cavitation bubble near or at the interface. Both the bubble dynamics on a short time scale and the interface evolution on a much longer time scale are recorded via high-speed photography. Two mechanisms are found to contribute to the fluid mixing in our system. First, when a bubble is initiated in the oil phase or at the interface, an inertia-dominated high-speed liquid jet generated from the collapsing bubble penetrates the water–oil interface, and consequently transports fine oil droplets into the water. The critical standoff parameter for jet penetration is found to be highly dependent on the density ratio of the two fluids. Furthermore, the pinch-off of an interface jet produced long after the bubble dynamics stage is reckoned as the second mechanism, carrying water droplets into the oil bulk. The dependence of the bubble jetting behaviours and interface jet dynamics on the governing parameters is systematically studied via experiments and boundary integral simulations. Particularly, we quantitatively demonstrate the respective roles of surface tension and viscosity in interface jet dynamics. As for a bubble initiated at the interface, an extended Rayleigh–Plesset model is proposed that well predicts the asymmetric dynamics of the bubble, which accounts for a faster contraction of the bubble top and a downward liquid jet.

Dynamics of macro- and micro-bubbles induced by nanosecond discharge in liquid water

Gaseous micro-bubbles dispersed in liquid water represent perturbations of the homogeneity of the liquid and influence the onset of electrical discharge in the bulk liquid. In this study, we systematically examined shadowgraph images to analyse the gaseous structures occurring in response to nanosecond micro-discharges produced in deionised water. The images revealed the dynamics of resolved bubbles and unresolved sub-micrometric structures starting from nanoseconds after the onset of discharge. We provide absolute counts and the radii distributions of micro-bubbles that occur near the anode needle and show how this depends on the amplitude and repetition frequency of the applied high-voltage pulses, when the latter varies between 0.1 and 100 Hz. A systematic statistical analysis showed that the probability of producing bubble-assisted nanosecond discharge in the liquid phase rapidly increases with the discharge repetition rate (>0.5 Hz). Although the cavitation bubble formed around the anode disintegrates and disappears from the anode region within the first millisecond, the sub-micrometric structures remain for tens of milliseconds, and fragmented micro-bubbles survive even for hundreds of milliseconds. Our findings impose strict limitations on the experimental setups used to investigate the mechanisms of direct discharge in liquid water.