Experimental evidence of viscosity influence

in the cavitation
structure
bubbles.
1
2
3
4
Vicente Salinas , Yolanda Vargas , Olivier Louisnard and Luis Gaete
1,2,4
3
1

Laboratory of Ultrasonics, Departament of Physics, University of Santiago de Chile, Av. Ecuador 3493, Santiago, Chile
Center RAPSODEE, UMR CNRS 5302, University of Toulouse, Ecole des Mines dAlbi, 81013 Albi Cedex 09, France
vicente.salinas@usach.cl, 2 yolanda.vargas@usach.cl,3 louisnard@enstimac.fr, 4 luis.gaete@usach.cl

Comparation Simulation-Experimental

Introduction
As it is well known when a fluid is irradiated with a high intensity ultrasonic
wave, a large number of oscillating micro-bubbles appears in it. During
cavitation, the bubbles are organized in striking structures, such as cones,
filaments, rings, starfish and others. In this work a preliminary experimental
study about the influence of viscosity in structures cavitation formation is
presented. For this objective, experiments in pure water and water-PEG
mixtures were carried out in the same geometry. The experimental set up
consists of a special multipurpose cavitation chamber with a bottom
transducer. The whole system was calibrated and the excitation amplitude
of the transducer can be controlled and measured. Our findings shown that
interesting, in intermediate vibration amplitude range the cavitation
structures remains unchanged for high or low viscosities. This situation is
different for higher or lower excitation amplitudes.

This setup is simulated using the model of [1], reasonable agreement in

some cases, but for transducer displacements different than the real one.

Experimental Setup
I

The cavitation chamber is a PIREX cylinder mounted in an PMMA base

Structure Bubbles in Water with PEG-8000 (viscosity 10)

Ultrasonic transducer resonating at 20700 [Hz]

I The images was acquired with a conventional camera, resolution 12 Mpx,
speed shot 1/200 and optical zoom x12
I The displacement is measured indirectly with the current across of the
transducer. This dependence was measured with a Laser Vibrometer.

Amplitude of Displacement (m)

106

reference

0.40[m]

1.21[m]

1.29[m]

1.56[m]

1.69[m]

1.89[m]

2.01[m]

2.38[m]

2.77[m]

3.05[m]

3.53[m]

3.89[m]

4.17[m]

OFF

1
0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5
0.6
Current RMS (A)

0.7

0.8

0.9

Results: Bubble Structure in Distilled Water

reference

0.43[m]

1.45[m]

Conclusion
The viscosity influence on the formation of cavitation structures has been
observed for this experimental set up.

1.60[m]

1.60[m]

1.65[m]

Future Works
Change the viscosity of the fluid with other PEG concentrations [2], vary
the geometry of the system, and correlate with simulations.

1.65[m]

2.21[m]

2.62[m]

Acknowledgements
MECESUP, project FSM0605 and CONICYT, Beca de apoyo a la
realizacion de la tesis doctoral ano 2012
2.98[m]

3.45[m]

3.66[m]

Reference

3.94[m]

4.08[m]

OFF

[1] O. Louisnard, Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, Volume 19, Issue 1, January

2012, Pages 56-76.
[2] Pedro Gonzalez-Tello, Fernando Camacho, Gabriel Blazquez, J. Chem.
Eng. Data, 1994, 39 (3), pp 611614.

Fluids under Acoustic Cavitation in finite enclosures: Experiments and Modeling

Ultrasonic Laboratory

vicente.salinas@usach.cl