The Dynamics of Single and Double Cavitation Bubbles and Interaction Between Bubbles and Different Materials

We present two distinct projects in this article. In the first project, an experiment aiming to quantify the impacts of material acoustic impedance and thickness on single laser-induced cavitation bubble dynamics with measurements of exerted pressure on a specific material in order to identify the primary sources most responsible for material damages is presented in this article. Two types of major pressure sources have been identified. For bubble collapsing near a rigid wall, when standoff ratio γ < 0.6, the ring collapse is the most prominent pressure source. The jet takes the strongest effects at γ = 1.12. The pressure is minimal at γ = 0.913. After the first jet impingement, a second ring collapse will follow and input the maximum pressure to the wall. By further increasing γ, a similar pressure profile of the second collapse to the first collapse is achieved, during which the pressure for the second collapse is minimal at γ = 1.41 and for the jet is maximum at γ = 1.79. Compared with the maximum pressure dealt by the first jet, the second ring collapse and jet are increasing much faster with the bubble size and eventually overwhelm the first jet. However, the first ring collapse is still the most dominant pressure source responsible for material damages. For wall featuring smaller acoustic impedance or thickness that cannot be approximated to a rigid body, the ring collapse and jet occur at smaller standoff ratios. The cavity shrinking rate suggests the maximum pressure exerted on the wall at applicable standoff ratios should be smaller than that on a rigid wall. In the second project, a comprehensive collection of dynamics of one and two laser-induced cavitation bubbles collapsing near different boundaries is presented in this article by measuring the velocity fields using particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques. Cases include a single bubble collapsing near the hard, medium, and soft walls characterized by acoustic impedance, free collapse of two bubbles, and two bubbles collapsing near the hard and soft walls. We implemented the most significant velocity and top velocity regions derived from each velocity field to analyze the features of these cases. Before converging to free collapse, the bubble near the hard wall experienced a significant velocity decrease before collapse, the bubble near the medium wall was severely damped at a specific standoff distance, and the bubble near the soft wall collapsed much earlier and preserved a linear velocity region at low speed. Free collapse of two same bubbles underwent a decrease of acceleration before collapse. Decreasing the size of one bubble caused a jet in the other. With the presence of a hard wall near two bubbles, the bubble closer to it may be stretched to a cavity with a high aspect ratio, leading to very mild collapse. With a bigger bubble between a smaller one and the soft wall, the merging cavity may suppress the tendency of jet formation, making the velocity stay at low levels throughout the lifetime. For configurations regarding single bubbles collapsing near a wall and free collapse of two same bubbles, we performed data scaling to study the velocity variations for different bubble sizes by controlling the standoff ratios and assessed the data quality aided by curving fitting and statistics. Results indicated measured velocity regarding a single bubble collapsing near the wall over its diameter remained the same given a standoff ratio, while measured velocity did not change given a standoff ratio for free collapse of two same bubbles within the scope of the experiment. In addition, we detailed the experimental setup and water treatment for better signal-to-noise ratios as well as validated the system from both the PIV and high speed imaging approaches using free collapse of a single bubble to ensure the reliability of this experiment.