Study of laser-induced cavitation bubble in liquid nitrogen

Abstract

The behavior of Vapor bubbles in cryogenic liquid is regarded as a cryogenic and phase-changing flow field, where instability of bubble surface becomes larger than those in normal temperature liquid as water or oil, since the cryogenic liquid has characteristic feature of small latent heat, surface tension, and viscosity. The cavitation phenomena in cryogenic temperature range are regarded as vacitation in the liquid of near-boiling point. The cryogenic cavitation, however, have a significant influence on solid surfaces due to their weakness in cryogenic range. In this paper, shock waves discharged from a pulse-laser induced bubble and behavior of the bubble are experimentally investigated. Pulsed YAG laser is used to produce a bubble in cryogenic liquid nitrogen, and shock waves are visualized by using a digital still camera with schlieren method.