Numerical Simulation of Vapor–Bubble Collapse—Heat Transfer and Nonlinear Dynamics Issues

Abstract

In this work, we compute the dynamics of a spherical vapor-bubble in an infinite pool of subcooled water during bubble collapse using our semi-analytical method. The main contribution of this work is to bring out the dynamics of nonmonotonic bubble collapse describing heat transfer characteristics and nonlinear dynamics. The dynamics shows the variation of radius with time for collapsing vapor bubble at different subcooling ΔTsub of 1.40 K to 35 K. The present approach accurately determines the bubble radius decreasing with time and has been compared with our experimental results, the experiment from literature, the other theories, and correlations. As it is noted that the literature lacks steady-state analysis of oscillating bubble collapse, we also report the steady-state analysis and the bifurcation analysis of bubble collapse at a pressure of 1.0 atm to check the stability of bubble collapse. The effect of ΔTsub and initial bubble radius R0 on dynamics of bubble collapse has been analyzed. The collapse of big bubbles involves with the bubble oscillations because of a large contribution of liquid inertia and the collapse of very small bubbles essentially occurs in heat transfer regime.