English

Path instabilities of air bubbles rising in clean water

patt-sol 2007-05-23 v1 Pattern Formation and Solitons

Abstract

Experiments are conducted to study the path and shape of single air bubbles (diameter range 0.10- 0.20cm) rising freely in clean water. The experimental results demonstrate that the bubble shape has a bistable state, i. e. the bubble chooses to be in spherical or ellipsoidal shape depending on its generation mechanism. The path of a spherical/ellipsoidal bubble is found to change from a straight path to a zigzag/spiral path via a supercritical/subcritical bifurcation when the Reynolds number of the bubble exceeds a threshold.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.patt-sol/9804002,
  title  = {Path instabilities of air bubbles rising in clean water},
  author = {Mingming Wu and Moteza Gharib},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:patt-sol/9804002},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

3 pages, RevTeX, 4 figures, submitted to Physics of Fluids