Rayleigh-Plesset equation of the bubble stable cavitation in water: A nonequilibrium all-atom molecular dynamics simulation study

Abstract

The Rayleigh-Plesset (RP) equation was derived from the first principles to describe the bubble cavitation in liquids in terms of macroscopic hydrodynamics. A number of nonequilibrium molecular dynamics studies have been carried out to validate this equation in describing the bubble inertial cavitation, but their results are contradictory and the applicability of the RP equation still remains to be examined, especially for the stable cavitation. In this work, we carry out nonequilibrium all-atom simulation to validate the applicability of the RP equation in the description of the stable cavitation of nano-sized bubbles in water. We show that although microscopic effects are not explicitly included, this equation still describes the dynamics of subnano-bubbles quite well as long as the contributions of various terms including inertial, surface tension, and viscosity are correctly taken into account. These terms are directly and inversely proportional to the amplitude and period of the cavitation, respectively. Thus, their contributions to the RP equation depend on these two parameters. This may explain the discrepancy between the current results obtained using different parameters. Finally, the accuracy of the RP equation in the current mathematical modeling studies of the ultrasound-induced blood-brain-barrier experiments is discussed in some detail.