Cavitation nucleation

Abstract

For his dissertation research at Harvard, Bob Apfel chose the subject of homogeneous nucleation, and conceived of some ingenious experiments to test existing theories. By selecting a small microdroplet of liquid, he could make the reasonable assumption that no inhomogeneities were present to serve as preferential sites for liquid rupture. However, Bob also studied dirty liquids, as well as very clean ones, and wrote some seminal papers on inhomogeneous nucleation, in which he developed the Golden rule: Know thy liquid! Currently, considerable attention has been devoted to the study of cavitation generation in vivo, particularly in blood, and, for this case, the nucleation conditions are much different than those for normal liquids. In this presentation, I will review some of Bob’s pioneering studies and present some of our latest studies of cavitation inception, both in vitro and in vivo.