In this paper a diffuse-interface model featuring phase change, transition to supercritical conditions, thermal conduction, compressibility effects and shock wave propagation is exploited to deal with the dynamics of a cavitation bubble. At variance with previous descriptions, the model is uniformly valid for all phases (liquid, vapor and supercritical) and phase transitions involved, allowing to describe the non-equilibrium processes ongoing during the collapse. As consequence of this unitary description, rather unexpectedly for pure vapor bubbles, the numerical experiments show that the collapse is accompanied by the emission of a strong shock wave in the liquid and by the oscillation of the bubble that periodically disappears and reappears, due to transition to super/sub critical conditions. The mechanism of shock wave formation is strongly related to the transition of the vapor to supercritical state, with a progressive steepening of the compression wave to form the shock which is eventually reflected as an outward propagating wave in the liquid.
We carry out a series of experiments with a special interest on growing and condensing processes of vapor bubble(s) injected into a subcooled pool. We examine effects of the degree of subcooling of the bulk in the pool and injection rate of the vapor into the pool. We pay their special attention to (i) abrupt collapse of the injected vapor bubble to form micrometer-scale bubbles, and (ii) interaction of adjacent vapor bubbles laterally injected to the pool through the orifices. We have found that a fine disturbance does arise on the surface of the vapor bubble just prior to its abrupt collapse…
Boiling crisis is a transition between nucleate and film boiling. In this communication we present a physical model of the boiling crisis based on the vapor recoil effect. Our numerical simulations of the thermally controlled bubble growth at high heat fluxes show how the bubble begins to spread over the heater thus forming a germ for the vapor film. The vapor recoil force not only causes the vapor spreading, it also creates a strong adhesion to the heater that prevents the bubble departure, thus favoring the further bubble spreading. Near the liquid-gas critical point, the bubble growth is ve…
Dynamics of vapor bubble train in flow boiling heat transfer in microchannels
State Key Laboratory of Engines, Tianjin University（天津大学内燃机燃烧学国家重点实验室）；National Industry-Education Platform of Energy Storage, Tianjin University（天津大学国家储能产教融合创新平台）
Electrofuels (e-fuels) produced from renewable electricity and carbon sources have gained significant attention in recent years as promising alternatives to fossil fuels for the transportation sector. However, the highly volatile e-fuels, such as short-chain oxymethylene ethers are prone to flash vaporization phenomena, which is associated with the formation and growth of vapor bubbles, followed by explosive bursting of the liquid jet. The simulation of a flash boiling spray of such highly volatile liquid fuels in the context of automotive or cryogenic engines is numerically challenging due to…
The understanding of the shrinkage dynamics of plasmonic bubbles formed around metallic nanoparticles immersed in liquid and irradiated by a resonant light source is crucial for the usage of these bubbles in numerous applications. In this paper we experimentally show and theoretically explain that a plasmonic bubble during its shrinkage undergoes two different phases: first, a rapid partial bubble shrinkage governed by vapor condensation and, second, a slow diffusion-controlled bubble dissolution. The history of the bubble formation plays an important role in the shrinkage dynamics during the …
Interaction between vapor bubbles during flow boiling heat transfer in microchannels
State Key Laboratory of Engines, Tianjin University（天津大学内燃机燃烧学国家重点实验室）；National Industry-Education Platform of Energy Storage, Tianjin University（天津大学国家储能产教融合创新平台）
The evaporation of vapor bubbles inside a microchannel is important to realize a device with high cooling performance. The liquid film formed on the solid surface is essential for evaporative heat transfer from solid to fluid; its formation process and heat transfer characteristics need to be investigated. The expansion process of a single vapor bubble via evaporative heat transfer in microchannels was evaluated via a numerical simulation in this study. In the calculation model, the working fluid used was saturated FC-72 at 0.1013 MPa and the channel diameter was 200 $μ$m. The superheat of the…
We report a 2D modeling of the thermal diffusion-controlled growth of a vapor bubble attached to a heating surface during saturated boiling. The heat conduction problem is solved in a liquid that surrounds a bubble with a free boundary and in a semi-infinite solid heater by the boundary element method. At high system pressure the bubble is assumed to grow slowly, its shape being defined by the surface tension and the vapor recoil force, a force coming from the liquid evaporating into the bubble. It is shown that at some typical time the dry spot under the bubble begins to grow rapidly under th…
We numerically investigate the effect of non-condensable gas inside a vapor bubble on bubble dynamics, collapse pressure and pressure impact of spherical and aspherical bubble collapses. Free gas inside a vapor bubble has a damping effect that can weaken the pressure wave and enhance the bubble rebound. To estimate this effect numerically, we derive and validate a multi-component model for vapor bubbles containing gas. For the cavitating liquid and the non-condensable gas, we employ a homogeneous mixture model with a coupled equation of state for all components. The cavitation model for the ca…
We consider the collapse behavior of cavitation bubbles near walls under high ambient pressure conditions. Generic configurations with different stand-off distances are investigated by numerical simulation using a fully compressible two-phase flow solver including phase change. The results show that the stand-off distance has significant effects on collapse dynamics, micro-jet formation, rebound, and maximum wall pressure. A relation between cavitation induced material damage and corresponding collapse mechanisms is obtained from pressure-impact data at the wall. We analyze the resolution depe…
A refined hydrochemical model for single-bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) is presented. The processes of water vapor evaporation and condensation, mass diffusion, and chemical reactions are taken into account. Numerical simulations of Xe-, Ar- and He-filled bubbles are carried out. The results show that the trapped water vapor in conjunction with its endothermic chemical reactions significantly reduces the temperature within the bubble so that the degrees of ionization are generally very low. The chemical radicals generated from water vapor are shown to play an increasingly important role in the…
In this paper, a numerical study is conducted to investigate boiling of a cryogen on a solid surface as well as on a liquid surface. Both single mode and multi-mode boiling is reported for boiling on to a solid surface. In case of boiling on a liquid surface, liquid nitrogen is selected as the cryogen (boiling fluid) and water is chosen as the base fluid (heating fluid). Different flow instabilities and their underlying consequences during boiling of a cryogen are also discussed. For the boiling on a solid surface, in the single mode, bubble growth, its departure, and area weighted average hea…
Boiling is a very efficient way to transfer heat from a heater to the liquid carrier. We discuss the boiling crisis, a transition between two regimes of boiling: nucleate and film boiling. The boiling crisis results in a sharp decrease in the heat transfer rate, which can cause a major accident in industrial heat exchangers. In this communication, we present a physical model of the boiling crisis based on the vapor recoil effect. Under the action of the vapor recoil the gas bubbles begin to spread over the heater thus forming a germ for the vapor film. The vapor recoil force not only causes it…
We investigate the nature of vapor bubble nucleation near a nanoscale-curved convex liquid-solid interface using two models; an equilibrium Gibbs model for homogenous formation, and a nonequilibrium dynamic van der Waals/diffuse interface model for phase change in an initially cool liquid. Vapor bubble formation is shown to occur for sufficiently large radius of curvature and is suppressed for smaller radii. Solid-fluid interactions are accounted for and it is shown that liquid-vapor interfacial energy, hence Laplace pressure, has limited influence over bubble formation. The dominant factor is…
Laser triggered and photothermally induced vapor bubbles have emerged as promising approaches to facilitate optomechanical energy conversion for numerous relevant applications in micro/nanofluidics. Here we report the observation of a sub-megahertz spontaneous nucleation of explosive plasmonic bubbles, triggered by a continuous wave laser. The periodic nucleation is found to be a result of the competition of Kelvin impulsive forces and thermal Marangoni forces applied on residual bubbles after collapse. The former originates from asymmetric bubble collapse, resulting in the directed locomotion…
Water-immersed gold nanoparticles irradiated by a laser can trigger the nucleation of plasmonic bubbles after a delay time of a few microseconds [Wang et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 122, 9253,(2018)]. Here we systematically investigated the light-vapor conversion efficiency, η, of these plasmonic bubbles as a function of the ambient pressure. The efficiency of the formation of these initial-phase and mainly water-vapor containing bubbles, which is defined as the ratio of the energy that is required to form the vapor bubbles and the total energy dumped in the gold nanoparticles before nucle…
We create a highly controlled lab environment-accessible to both global and local monitoring-to analyse turbulent boiling flows and in particular their shear stress in a statistically stationary state. Namely, by precisely monitoring the drag of strongly turbulent Taylor-Couette flow (the flow in between two co-axially rotating cylinders, Reynolds number $\textrm{Re}\approx 10^6$) during its transition from non-boiling to boiling, we show that the intuitive expectation, namely that a few volume percent of vapor bubbles would correspondingly change the global drag by a few percent, is wrong. Ra…
When a horizontal resistive wire is heated up to the boiling point in a subcooled liquid bath, some vapor bubbles nucleate on its surface. Traditional nucleate boiling theory predicts that bubbles generated from active nucleate sites, grow up and depart from the heating surface due to buoyancy and inertia. However, we observed here a different behavior: the bubbles slide along the heated wire. In this situation, unexpected regimes are observed; from the simple sliding motion to bubble clustering. We noticed that bubbles could rapidly change their moving direction and may also interact. Finally…
Effects of nanostructured defects of copper solid surface on the bubble growth in liquid argon have been investigated through a hybrid atomistic-continuum method. The same solid surfaces with five different nanostructures, namely, wedge defect, deep rectangular defect (R-I), shallow rectangular defect (R-II), small rectangular defect (R-III) and no defect, have been modeled at molecular level. The liquid argon is placed on top of the hot solid copper with superheat of 30 K after equilibration is achieved with CFD-MD coupled simulation. Phase change of argon on five nanostructures has been obse…
The non-linear bubble dynamics equations in a compressible liquid have been modified considering the effects of compressibility of both the liquid and the gas at the bubble interface. A new bubble boundary equation has been derived, which includes a new term resulted from the liquid bulk viscosity effects. The influence of this term has been numerically investigated considering the effects of water vapor and chemical reactions on the bubble evolution. The results clearly indicate that the new term has an important damping role at the collapse, so that its consideration decreases the amplitude …
Bubbles dispersed in liquids are widely present in many natural and industrial processes, and play a key role in mediating mass transfer during their lifetime from formation to rising to bursting. In particular, nano/micro-sized particulates and organisms, present in the bulk water can be highly enriched in the jet drops ejected during bubble bursting, impacting global climate and public health. However, the detailed mechanism of this enrichment remains obscure, with the enrichment factor being difficult to predict. Here, we experimentally investigate the enrichment of nano/micro-sized particl…
We analyze the properties of naturally formed nano-bubbles in Lennard-Jones molecular dynamics simulations of liquid-to-vapor nucleation in the boiling and the cavitation regimes. The large computational volumes provide a realistic environment at unchanging average temperature and liquid pressure, which allows us to accurately measure properties of bubbles from their inception as stable, critically sized bubbles, to their continued growth into the constant speed regime. Bubble gas densities are up to 50$%$ lower than the equilibrium vapor densities at the liquid temperature, yet quite close to…
Recently-reported data suggest that bubble nucleation on surfaces with nano-sized features (cavities and posts) may occur close to the thermodynamic saturation temperature. However, according to the traditional theory of heterogeneous bubble nucleation, such low nucleation temperatures are possible only for surfaces with micro-scale cavities. Motivated by this apparent contradiction, we have used infrared thermometry to measure the nucleation temperature of water on custom-fabricated nano- to micro-scale cavities (from 90 nm to 4.5 um in diameter) and posts (from 60 nm to 5 um in diameter), ma…
Equations of radial motion of a gas bubble in a compressible viscous liquid have been modified to account for compressibility at the bubble boundary. A new bubble boundary equation has been derived, including a new term resulted from liquid compressibility. The influence of this term has been numerically investigated using isothermal-adiabatic model for the gas inside the bubble. The results clearly indicate that, at the end of the collapse, the new term has a very significant role and its consideration dramatically changes the bubble characteristics. Moreover, the more intense the collapse is…
Cavitation bubbles collapsing and rebounding in a pressure gradient grad(p) form a "micro-jet" enveloped by a "vapor jet". This letter presents unprecedented observations of the vapor jets formed in a uniform gravity-induced grad(p), modulated aboard parabolic flights. The data uncovers that the normalized jet volume is independent of the liquid density and viscosity and proportional to zeta=grad(p)*R0/p, where R0 is the maximal bubble radius and p is the driving pressure. A derivation inspired by "Kelvin-Blake" considerations confirms this law and reveals its negligible dependence of surface …
A gas or vapor bubble collapsing in the vicinity of a rigid boundary displaces towards the boundary and produces a high-speed jet directed at the boundary. This behavior has been shown to be a function of the 'anisotropy' of the collapse, measured by a dimensionless representation of the Kelvin impulse known as the anisotropy parameter [Supponen et al., J. Fluid Mech. 802, 263-293 (2016)]. However, characterisation of the anisotropy parameter in different geometries has been limited to simplified analytic solutions. In this work we develop an inexpensive numerical model, based on the Boundary …
The collapse of a vapor bubble near a flat solid boundary results in the formation of a jet that is directed towards the boundary. In more complex geometries such as corners, predictions of the collapse cannot be made in a straightforward manner due to the loss of axial symmetry. We experimentally investigate the bubble collapse and jet formation in corners formed of two flat solid boundaries with different opening angles. Using potential flow analysis, we accurately predict the direction of the jet and bubble displacement. We further show that for a corner with an opening angle $α$, there exi…
We report on recent progress in the physical and numerical modeling of compressible two-phase flows that involve phase transition between the liquid and gaseous state of the fluid. The high-speed dynamics of cavitation bubbles is studied in well-resolved simulations (DNS) with a sharp-interface numerical model on a micro scale. The underlying assumption of the employed evaporation/condensation model is that phase change occurs in thermal non-equilibrium and that the associated timescale is larger than that of the wave dynamics. Results for the collapse of a spherical vapor bubble close to a so…
A one-dimensional model of inertial pumping is introduced and solved. The pump is driven by a high-pressure vapor bubble generated by a microheater positioned asymmetrically in a microchannel. The bubble is approximated as a short-term impulse delivered to the two fluidic columns inside the channel. Fluid dynamics is described by a Newton-like equation with a variable mass, but without the mass derivative term. Because of smaller inertia, the short column refills the channel faster and accumulates a larger mechanical momentum. After bubble collapse the total fluid momentum is nonzero, resultin…
Bubble nucleation in liquid confined in nanochannel is studied using molecular dynamics simulations and compared against nucleation in the liquid over smooth (i.e. without confinement). Nucleation is achieved by heating part of a surface to high temperatures using a surface-to-liquid heating algorithm implemented in LAMMPS. The surface hydrophilicity of nanochannels is increased to understand its effect on nucleation behavior. Liquid structuring is found to play a significant role in altering thermodynamic properties of density and pressure in the nanochannels, which in turn changes the enthal…
When applying a voltage bias across a thin nanopore, localized Joule heating can lead to single bubble nucleation, offering a unique platform for studying nanoscale bubble behavior, which is still poorly understood. Accordingly, we investigate bubble nucleation and collapse inside solid-state nanopores filled with electrolyte solutions and find that there exists a clear correlation between homo/heterogeneous bubble nucleation and the pore diameter. As the pore diameter is increased from 280 nm to 525 nm, the nucleation regime transitions from predominantly periodic homogeneous nucleation to a …
We study the effects of heterogeneity on interfacial pinning and hydrodynamic drag using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of Janus nanospheres at a liquid/vapor interface. We construct the free energy landscape for this system, both in the continuum approximation using surfaces tensions and the flat-interface approximation and atomistically using MD and thermodynamic integration. The results of the two methods differ in detail due to interfacial distortion and finite width, as well as thermal fluctuations, and only the MD landscape is consistent with simulations of a nanosphere approaching …
The aim of the paper is the study of fluid mixtures in nanotubes by the methods of continuum mechanics. The model starts from a statistical distribution in mean-field molecular theory and uses a density expansion of Taylor series. We get a continuous expression of the volume free energy with density's spatial-derivatives limited at the second order. The nanotubes can be filled with liquid or vapor according to the chemical characteristics of the walls and of liquid or vapor mixture-bulks. An example of two-fluid mixture constituted of water and ethanol inside carbon nanotubes at 20{\textdegree…
This paper deals with the triggering mechanism of the boiling crisis, a transition from nucleate to film boiling. We observe the boiling crisis in pool saturated boiling experimentally at nearly critical pressure to take advantage of the slowness of the bubble growth and of the smallness of the Critical Heat Flux (CHF) that defines the transition point. Such experiments require the reduced gravity conditions. Close to the CHF, the slow growth of the individual dry spots and their subsequent fusion on the transparent heater are observed through the latter. As discussed in the paper, these obser…
Oscillations of gas bubbles in liquids irradiated with acoustic pressure waves may result in an intriguing physical phenomenon called sonoluminescence, where a collapsing bubble emits the light in a broad optical spectral range. However, the intensity of the so-generated light is typically weak for practical purposes. Recently, it has been demonstrated that nanoparticles can be used to increase the efficiency of sonoluminescence, thereby enabling one to generate the light that is intense enough for a number of applications in photonics, biomedicine and material science. In this article, we rev…
Experiments have not only revealed the remarkably long lifetime of nanobubbles, but also demonstrated the diffusive instability of bubbles above micrometers, thus a full-scale physical understanding on the stability of bubbles is in urgent need. Herein, we develop a model that captures the state transition from the stable nanobubbles to the unstable microbubbles on homogeneous surfaces. The transition explains the typical long lifetime, limited height and small contact angle of surface nanobubbles observed in experiments. The consequent phase diagram shows that the bubble size and gas dissolvi…
Remaining within the pure hydrodynamic approach, we formulate a self-consistent model for simulating the dynamic behavior of matter passing through metastable states in the two-phase liquid-vapor region of the phase diagram. The model is based on the local criterion of explosive boiling, derived by applying the theory of homogeneous bubble nucleation in superheated liquids. Practical application of the proposed model is illustrated with hydrodynamic simulations of a volumetrically uniformly heated planar layer of fused silica SiO2. Implications for experimentally measurable quantities are brie…
The transition from nucleate to film boiling on micro/nano textured surfaces is of crucial importance in a number of practical applications, where it needs to be avoided to enable safe and efficient heat transfer. Previous studies have focused on the transition process at the macroscale, where heat transfer and bubble generation are activated on an array of micro/nanostructures. In the present study, we narrow down our investigation scale to a single nanopore, where, through localized Joule heating within the pore volume, single-bubble nucleation and transition are examined at nanosecond resol…
