Interaction of bubble jets with viscoelastic surfaces

Abstract

Bubble jets, fast liquid jets caused by the asymmetric collapse of gas bubbles, have been of great interest to various fields of engineering. Many studies have revealed that the dynamics of bubble jets change significantly by the physical properties of proximate boundaries. However, a bubble jet behavior near a viscoelastic boundary still remains unknown. This study numerically investigated the interaction of a bubble jet near viscoelastic solids, modelled by the Kelvin-Voigt material, using a coupled algorithm of finite volume method and finite element method. The simulation results showed a great deal of change in the bubble jet dynamics with varying viscoelastic properties. This change was explained by the characteristics of the Kelvin-Voigt model and the comparison of the jet kinetic energy with the elastic energy of the solid. We expect that this new approach would be a simple and robust way of investigating the complicated bubble jet-viscoelastic solid interaction.