Spherical Bubble Collapse in Uniformly Subcooled Liquids

Abstract

A theoretical calculation on the collapse rate of a single spherical bubble was developed. A vapor bubble, small enough to be treated as a sphere, was taken as a model and a numerical analysis was made assuming that the pressure impact equivalent to the given subcooling was inflicted upon the bubble. The results show that there are two different stages of collapse and also that the later stage dies out when the system parameters or subcooling exceed the critical conditions. It also became clear that there is a possibility of bubble volume oscillations. This partially explains the experimental facts reported in some papers. Some experiments were made using water, the final level of which was the atmospheric pressure, and fairly good agreement was observed with the calculated values.