Cavitation-induced fragmentation of an acoustically-levitated droplet

In this paper we investigate the initial sequence of events that lead to the fragmentation of a millimetre sized water droplets when interacting with a focused ns-laser pulse. The experimental results show complex processes that result from the reflection of an initial shock wave from plasma generat...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Avila, Silvestre Roberto Gonzalez, Ohl, Claus-Dieter
Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/88503
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/45883
Description
Summary:In this paper we investigate the initial sequence of events that lead to the fragmentation of a millimetre sized water droplets when interacting with a focused ns-laser pulse. The experimental results show complex processes that result from the reflection of an initial shock wave from plasma generation with the soft boundary of the levitating droplet; furthermore, when the reflected waves from the walls of the droplet refocus they leave behind a trail of microbubbles that later act as cavitation inception regions. Numerical simulations of a shock wave impacting and reflecting from a soft boundary are also reported; the simulated results show that the lowest pressure inside the droplet occurs at the equatorial plane. The results of the numerical model display good agreement with the experimental results both in time and in space.