Experimental investigation of the impact on nearby solid boundary during laser-generated bubble collapse

Abstract

Cavitation damage has been considered as being responsible for many effects in hydraulic machinery and biological medicine. In order to better understand the cavity interaction with nearby solid surfaces, the impact loading induced by the high-speed liquid-jet and subsequent jet flow during the final stage of the bubble collapse in a static fluid is investigated by focusing a Q-switched pulsed laser into water. By means of a new method based on a fibre-coupling optical beam deflection technique, a detailed experimental study has been made to clarify the relationship of the impact pressure against a solid boundary as a function of the dimensionless γ that is generally used to describe the bubble dynamics with its definition γ = s/Rmax (Rmax being the maximum bubble radius and s denoting the distance of the cavity inception from the boundary). The experimental results are shown that for γ in the range of about 0.67 to 0.95 with a pulsed laser energy 230mJ, the transient pressure applied on the solid surface is maximum; while for γ>1 or γ<0.67, it is gradually decreased. By combination of our experimental results with the other work that detected the acoustic emission during the bubble collapse at different γ, it is concluded that in this range of 0.67–0.95, the destructive effect due to a liquid-jet and the following jet flow impact actually outweighs the well-known effect of shock wave emission and plays a vital role during the cavitation bubble collapse.