Molecular dynamics study on the nucleation and growth of cavitation bubbles

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 120; no. 5_Supplement; pp. 3164 - 3165
• Main Authors: Takagi, Shu, Tsuda, Shinichi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-11-2006
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.4787887

Molecular dynamics simulations have been conducted for the nucleation and growth processes of cavitation bubbles in a decompressed liquid. To investigate the effects of noncondensable gas, the comparison between one-component liquid argon and two-component liquid argon, which includes helium gas molecules as impurities, was made. As a result, we observed that a competing coarsening similar to Ostwald ripening occurs in the one-component liquid argon, while coalescence of bubble nuclei frequently occurs in the two-component case. In spite of the different growth patterns between the two cases, the values of the growth exponent are close to 1/2 in both cases. However, it has been found that the scaling components that constitute the growth exponent, i.e., the scaling exponent for the total radius of all nuclei and that for the number of nuclei, are different between the two cases. These scaling components are discussed in relation to a driving force for bubble nuclei to grow. In addition, the asymptotic behavior of the size distribution function of bubble nuclei is also discussed using these scaling parameters.