Bubble deformation by a turbulent flow

TL;DR

This paper studies how bubbles deform in turbulent flows using simulations and theoretical models, revealing two deformation regimes and linking bubble lifetime to turbulence statistics.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework connecting bubble deformation modes to turbulence fluctuations and analyzes deformation growth regimes through simulations.

Findings

Deformation growth is linear in time during the inertial regime.

A transition occurs at the Rayleigh oscillation period.

High Weber number bubbles have lifetimes related to turbulence statistics.

Abstract

We investigate the modes of deformation of an initially spherical bubble immersed in a homogeneous and isotropic turbulent background flow. We perform direct numerical simulations of the two-phase incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, considering a low-density bubble in the high density turbulent flow at various Weber number (the ratio of turbulent and surface tension forces) using the air-water density ratio. We discuss a theoretical framework for the bubble deformation in a turbulent flow using a spherical harmonic decomposition. We propose, for each mode of bubble deformation, a forcing term given by the statistics of velocity and pressure fluctuations, evaluated on a sphere of the same radius. This approach formally relates the bubble deformation and the background turbulent velocity fluctuations, in the limit of small deformations. The growth of the total surface deformation and of each individual mode is computed from the direct numerical simulations using an appropriate Voronoi decomposition of the bubble surface. We show that two successive temporal regimes occur: the first regime corresponds to deformations driven only by inertial forces, with the interface deformation growing linearly in time, in agreement with the model predictions, whereas the second regime results from a balance between inertial forces and surface tension. The transition time between the two regimes is given by the period of the first Rayleigh mode of bubble oscillation. We discuss how our approach can be used to relate the bubble lifetime to the turbulence statistics and eventually show that at high Weber number, bubble lifetime can be deduced from the statistics of turbulent fluctuations at the bubble scale.