Interactions between a central bubble and a surrounding bubble cluster

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical model to analyze the complex interactions between a central bubble and a surrounding cluster, validated by underwater explosion experiments, revealing how cluster scale affects bubble pulsation.

Contribution

It introduces a unified theoretical approach to model bubble interactions within a cluster, incorporating pressure wave propagation effects, and validates it with experimental data.

Findings

Cluster scale influences bubble pulsation characteristics.

The model accurately predicts bubble interactions in underwater explosions.

Pressure wave propagation effects are significant in bubble dynamics.

Abstract

The interaction of multiple bubbles is a complex physical problem. A simplified case of multiple bubbles is studied theoretically with a bubble located at the center of a circular bubble cluster. All bubbles in the cluster are equally spaced and own the same initial conditions as the central bubble. The unified theory for bubble dynamics (Zhang et al. arXiv:2301.13698) is applied to model the interaction between the central bubble and the circular bubble cluster. To account for the effect of the propagation time of pressure waves, the emission source of the wave is obtained by interpolating the physical information on the time axis. An underwater explosion experiment with two bubbles of different scales is used to validate the theoretical model. The effect of the bubble cluster with a variation in scale on the pulsation characteristics of the central bubble is studied.