Particle tracking velocimetry of the flow field around a collapsing cavitation bubble

The velocity field in the vicinity of a laser-generated cavitation bubble in water is investigated by means of particle tracking velocimetry (PTV). Two situations are explored: a bubble collapsing spherically and a bubble collapsing aspherically near a rigid wall. In the first case, the accuracy of the PTV method is assessed by comparing the experimental data with the flow field around the bubble as obtained from numerical simulations of the radial bubble dynamics. The numerical results are matched to the experimental radius–time curve extracted from high-speed photographs by tuning the model parameters. Trajectories of tracer particles are calculated and used to model the experimental process of the PTV measurement. For the second case of a bubble collapsing near a rigid wall, both the bubble shape and the velocity distribution in the fluid around the bubble are measured for different standoff parameters γ at several instants in time. The results for γ > 1 are compared with the corresponding results of a boundary-integral simulation. For both cases, good agreement between simulation and experiment is found.