Cavitation Microstreaming

In the research reported here an attempt has been made to discover by experiment what physical assumptions and approximations are appropriate in the theory of cavitation microstreaming, especially for cavitation bubbles located near solid boundaries. A systematic investigation of the phenomenon has been made and its dependence on certain parameters (e.g., amplitude of sound) has been determined. The investigation has disclosed that as the sound amplitude is varied, other conditions remaining the same, the streaming changes discontinuously through several stable regimes. It appears that in order to account for the generation of vorticity one needs to assume different conditions at the boundaries for each regime. For at least one regime, a theoretical model due to Nyborg seems to be applicable; comparison made with experimentally determined streaming velocities.