Unorthodox bubbles when boiling in cold water

Scott Parker, Steve Granick

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

High-speed movies are taken when bubbles grow at gold surfaces heated spotwise with a near-infrared laser beam heating water below the boiling point (60-70° C) with heating powers spanning the range from very low to so high that water fails to rewet the surface after bubbles detach. Roughly half the bubbles are conventional: They grow symmetrically through evaporation until buoyancy lifts them away. Others have unorthodox shapes and appear to contribute disproportionately to heat transfer efficiency: mushroom cloud shapes, violently explosive bubbles, and cavitation events, probably stimulated by a combination of superheating, convection, turbulence, and surface dewetting during the initial bubble growth. Moreover, bubbles often follow one another in complex sequences, often beginning with an unorthodox bubble that stirs the water, followed by several conventional bubbles. This large dataset is analyzed and discussed with emphasis on how explosive phenomena such as cavitation induce discrepancies from classical expectations about boiling.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number013011
JournalPhysical Review E - Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
Volume89
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 15 2014
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
  • Statistics and Probability
  • Condensed Matter Physics

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