Differences and Similarity in the Dynamic and Acoustic Properties of Gas Microbubbles in Liquid Mercury and Water

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Differences and similarities in the dynamics of microbubbles in liquid mercury and water are clarified and summarized in order to evaluate the validity and usefulness of experiments with water as an alternative to experiments with mercury. Pressure-wave induced cavitation in liquid mercury is of particular concern in the high-power pulsed neutron sources working in Japan and the U.S. Toward suppressing the pressure waves and cavitation, injection of gas microbubbles into liquid mercury has been attempted. However, many difficulties arise in mercury experiments mainly because liquid mercury is an opaque liquid. Hence we and collaborators have performed water experiments as an alternative, in conjunction with mercury experiments. In this paper, we discussed how we should use the result with water and how we can make the water experiments meaningful. The non-dimensional numbers of bubbly liquids and bubbles' rise velocity, coalescence frequency, and response to heat input were investigated theoretically for both mercury and water. A suggestion was made to "see through" bubble distribution in flowing mercury from the result of water study, and a notable similarity was found in the effect of bubbles to absorb thermal expansion of the liquids.
2010-04-15