Effects of surface tension on bubble growth in an extensive uniformly superheated liquid

Abstract

The study of bubble growth in an extensive pool of liquid provides considerable insight into the mechanisms that play a role in bubble growth near a heated surface and in the cavitation phenomenon. This work focuses on analyzing the effects of surface tension on the growth rate for the thermally controlled stage of a single bubble in such a liquid. The conservation of energy equations, including the internal energy term for the bubble and that within boundary layer around it, are numerically solved. The complete temporal variations of the bubble in water and liquid nitrogen are investigated based on the assumption that the bubble growth is controlled only in sequence by inertia and heat. Thus, the two stages are subject to the continuity of the bubble growth, while the inertia-controlled stage is only formulated by the well-known Rayleigh solution. The thickness of the boundary layer around the bubble is also determined. The results are comparable with the Plesset-Zwick models and Forster-Zuber models, as well as available experimental data. It is found that the influence of internal energy on the rate of bubble growth is small enough to be ignored; however, the accumulative effects of the surface tension are significant and increase with a decrease in the degree of superheat. © 2011 Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.