Acoustic bubble cavitation

Ashokkumar M, Lee J, Iida Y, Yasui K, Kozuka T, Tuziuti T, Towata A (2009) The detection and control of stable and transient acoustic cavitation bubbles. Phys Chem Chem Phys 11 10118-10121... 

Parlitz U, Mettin R, Luther S, Akhatov I, Voss M, Lauterbom W (1999) Spatio-temporal dynamics of acoustic cavitation bubble cloud. Philos Trans R Soc London A 357 313-334... 

Sunartio D, Yasui K, Tuziuti T, Kozuka T, Iida Y, Ashokkumar M, Grieser F (2007) Correlation between Na emission and chemically active acoustic cavitation bubbles. Chemphyschem 8 2331-2335... 

Ciawi E, Ashokkumar M, Grieser F (2006) Limitations of the methyl radical recombination method for acoustic cavitation bubble temperature measurements in aqueous solutions. J Phys Chem B 110 9779-9781... 

Brotchie A, Grieser F, Ashokkumar M (2009) The effect of power and frequency on acoustic cavitation bubble size distributions. Phys Rev Lett 102 084302... 

Physical Chemist who specializes in Sonochemistry, teaches undergraduate and postgraduate Chemistry and is a senior academic staff member of the School of Chemistry, University of Melbourne. Ashok is a renowned sono-chemist who has developed a number of novel techniques to characterize acoustic cavitation bubbles and has made major contributions of applied sonochemistry to the Food and Dairy industry. His research team has developed a novel ultrasonic processing technology for improving the functional properties of dairy ingredients. Recent research also involves the ultrasonic synthesis of functional... 

Guzman HR, McNamara Af, Nguyen DX, Prausnitz MR (2003) Bioeffects caused by changes in acoustic cavitation bubble density and cell concentration a unified explanation based on cell-to-bubble ratio and blast radius. Ultrasound Med Biol 29 1211-1222... 

Fernandez Rivas D, Betjes J, Verhaagen B, Bouwhuis W, Bor TC, Lohse D, Gardeniers HJGE (2013) Erosion evolution in mono-crystalline silicon surfaces caused by acoustic cavitation bubbles. J Appl Phys 113 064902... 

Kuwahara. M, et.al. "Acoustics Cavitation Bubbles in the Kidney Induced by Focused Shock Waves for the Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy(ESWL)",Proc. 17th ISSW T (to appear 1990). ... 

M. Ashokkumar, The characterization of acoustic cavitation bubbles - an overview, Ultrason. Sonochem. 18 (2011) 864-872. 

The phenomenon of acoustic cavitation results in an enormous concentration of energy. If one considers the energy density in an acoustic field that produces cavitation and that in the coUapsed cavitation bubble, there is an amplification factor of over eleven orders of magnitude. The enormous local temperatures and pressures so created result in phenomena such as sonochemistry and sonoluminescence and provide a unique means for fundamental studies of chemistry and physics under extreme conditions. A diverse set of apphcations of ultrasound to enhancing chemical reactivity has been explored, with important apphcations in mixed-phase synthesis, materials chemistry, and biomedical uses. 

A. A. Atchley and L. A. Crum, Acoustic cavitation and bubble dynamics, in Ultrasound, its Chemical, Physical and Biological Effect, K. S. Suslick, ed, VCH, New York (1988). 

Abstract Acoustic cavitation is the formation and collapse of bubbles in liquid irradiated by intense ultrasound. The speed of the bubble collapse sometimes reaches the sound velocity in the liquid. Accordingly, the bubble collapse becomes a quasi-adiabatic process. The temperature and pressure inside a bubble increase to thousands of Kelvin and thousands of bars, respectively. As a result, water vapor and oxygen, if present, are dissociated inside a bubble and oxidants such as OH, O, and H2O2 are produced, which is called sonochemical reactions. The pulsation of active bubbles is intrinsically nonlinear. In the present review, fundamentals of acoustic cavitation, sonochemistry, and acoustic fields in sonochemical reactors have been discussed. 

When the instantaneous local pressure becomes negative in liquid irradiated by ultrasound, bubbles are generated because gas such as air dissolved in the liquid can no longer be dissolved in the liquid under negative pressure, which is called acoustic cavitation [5, 6]. For a static condition, vapor bubbles are generated when the static pressure is lower than the saturated vapor pressure, which is called boiling. In many cases of acoustic cavitation, the instantaneous local pressure should be negative because the duration of low pressure is short. 

There are two types in acoustic cavitation. One is transient cavitation and the other is stable cavitation [14, 15]. There are two definitions in transient cavitation. One is that the lifetime of a bubble is relatively short such as one or a few acoustic cycles as a bubble is fragmented into daughter bubbles due to its shape instability. The other is that bubbles are active in light emission (sonoluminescence (SL)) or chemical reactions (sonochemical reactions). Accordingly, there are two definitions in stable cavitation. One is that bubbles are shape stable and have a long lifetime. The other is that bubbles are inactive in SL and chemical reactions. There exist... 

In Fig. 1.1, the parameter space for transient and stable cavitation bubbles is shown in R0 (ambient bubble radius) - pa (acoustic amplitude) plane [15]. The ambient bubble radius is defined as the bubble radius when an acoustic wave (ultrasound) is absent. The acoustic amplitude is defined as the pressure amplitude of an acoustic wave (ultrasound). Here, transient and stable cavitation bubbles are defined by their shape stability. This is the result of numerical simulations of bubble pulsations. Above the thickest line, bubbles are those of transient cavitation. Below the thickest line, bubbles are those of stable cavitation. Near the left upper side, there is a region for bubbles of high-energy stable cavitation designated by Stable (strong nf0) . In the brackets, the type of acoustic cavitation noise is indicated. The acoustic cavitation noise is defined as acoustic emissions from... 

Fig. 1.1 The regions for transient cavitation bubbles and stable cavitation bubbles when they are defined by the shape stability of bubbles in the parameter space of ambient bubble radius (R0) and the acoustic amplitude (p ). The ultrasonic frequency is 515 kHz. The thickest line is the border between the region for stable cavitation bubbles and that for transient ones. The type of bubble pulsation has been indicated by the frequency spectrum of acoustic cavitation noise such as nf0 (periodic pulsation with the acoustic period), nfo/2 (doubled acoustic period), nf0/4 (quadrupled acoustic period), and chaotic (non-periodic pulsation). Any transient cavitation bubbles result in the broad-band noise due to the temporal fluctuation in the number of bubbles. Reprinted from Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, vol. 17, K.Yasui, T.Tuziuti, J. Lee, T.Kozuka, A.Towata, and Y. Iida, Numerical simulations of acoustic cavitation noise with the temporal fluctuation in the number of bubbles, pp. 460-472, Copyright (2010), with permission from Elsevier...

How is a bubble created in acoustic cavitation There are three mechanisms in nucleation of a bubble in acoustic cavitation [14], One is the nucleation at the surface of solids such as a liquid container, motes or particles in liquid, if present. Nucleation takes place especially at crevices of motes, particles or a liquid container (Fig. 1.3). 

The third mechanism for nucleation is the fragmentation of active cavitation bubbles [16]. A shape unstable bubble is fragmented into several daughter bubbles which are new nuclei for cavitation bubbles. Shape instability of a bubble is mostly induced by an asymmetric acoustic environment such as the presence of a neighboring bubble, solid object, liquid surface, or a traveling ultrasound, or an asymmetric liquid container etc. [25-27] Under some condition, a bubble jets many tiny bubbles which are new nuclei [6, 28]. This mechanism is important after acoustic cavitation is fully started. 

Relative importance of coalescence and rectified diffusion in the bubble growth is still under debate. After acoustic cavitation is fully started, coalescence of bubbles may be the main mechanism of the bubble growth [16, 34], On the other hand, at the initial development of acoustic cavitation, rectified diffusion may be the main mechanism as the rate of coalescence is proportional to the square of the number density of bubbles which should be small at the initial stage of acoustic cavitation. Further studies are required on this subject. 

In a bath-type sonochemical reactor, a damped standing wave is formed as shown in Fig. 1.13 [1]. Without absorption of ultrasound, a pure standing wave is formed because the intensity of the reflected wave from the liquid surface is equivalent to that of the incident wave at any distance from the transducer. Thus the minimum acoustic-pressure amplitude is completely zero at each pressure node where the incident and reflected waves are exactly cancelled each other. In actual experiments, however, there is absorption of ultrasound especially due to cavitation bubbles. As a result, there appears a traveling wave component because the intensity of the incident wave is higher than that of the reflected wave. Thus, the local minimum value of acoustic pressure amplitude is non-zero as seen in Fig. 1.13. It should be noted that the acoustic-pressure amplitude at the liquid surface (gas-liquid interface) is always zero. In Fig. 1.13, there is the liquid surface... 

In a multibubble field, every pulsating bubble radiates secondary acoustic wave called acoustic cavitation noise. The pulsation of a bubble is driven by both the primary ultrasound and the acoustic cavitation noise. The influence of the latter on the bubble pulsation is called bubble-bubble interaction [89, 90]. Generally speaking, the bubble-bubble interaction suppresses the bubble expansion as shown in Fig. 1.16 [38, 89-91]. Further studies are required on this topic. 

In acoustic cavitation, some bubbles dramatically expand and violently collapse, which is called the inertial collapse or Rayleigh collapse. It is caused by both the spherically shrinking geometry and the inertia of the surrounding liquid which inwardly flows into the bubble. The bubble collapse is similar to that in hydrodynamic cavitation which is induced by a sudden drop of pressure below the saturated vapor pressure due to a fluid flow through an orifice [92, 93]. At the end of the... 

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