The Physics of Gas and Vapor Bubbles

Bubbles have unique properties that make them of great importance in disparate fields such as energy production, acoustics, chemical engineering, material processing, biomedicine, food science and a host of others which, on the surface, appear to have little in common. Bringing together information scattered in many hundreds of sources, this book provides a unified treatment of the subject, illustrating the roots of this surprising versatility with a wealth of examples. The emphasis is on physics, explained with words and images before introducing a limited mathematical apparatus. Building on the foundation of the compressible and incompressible Rayleigh-Plesset equation, the treatment continues with the volume oscillations of gas bubbles and associated scattering and emission of sound, the diffusion of dissolved gases and of heat, boiling, nucleation and the behavior of bubbles in elastic and visco-elastic media. The book concludes with chapters on biomedical applications, sonochemistry, acoustic and flow cavitation and bubbly liquids.