Liquid jet formation through the interactions of a laser-induced bubble and a gas bubble

The mechanisms of the liquid jet formation from the interaction of the laser-induced and gas bubble pair are investigated and compared with the jet formation from the interaction of the laser-induced anti-phase bubble pair. The strobe photography experimental method and numerical simulations are implemented to obtain the parameter space of the optimum liquid jet, i.e. highest speed and lowest diameter. It is found that due to the enhanced “catapult effect”, which is induced by the protrusion of the first bubble into the second bubble and the flip back of the elongated part of the first bubble, the optimum liquid jet of the second bubble of the laser-induced anti-phase bubble pair compared to that of the laser-induced and gas bubble pair is 54 %, 65 % and 11 % faster in speed, and 4 %, 44 % and 64 % smaller in diameter, for the 500 μm, 50 μm and 5 μm sized bubbles, respectively. The optimum dimensionless distance for the optimum jet of the laser-induced and the gas bubble is around 0.7, when the maximum bubble radius increases from ∼ 5μm to ∼500 μm, which is different from the laser-induced anti-phase bubble pairs. Besides, the optimum jet of the laser-induced bubble appeared when the bubbles are equal sized, while that of the gas bubble is independent of the relative bubble size, i.e. the liquid jet of the gas bubble has higher robustness in real liquid jet assisted applications when the laser-induced bubble size varies. However, the jet of bubble 2 could maintain a high speed (20 m/s - 35 m/s) and a low diameter (∼5 % of the maximum bubble diameter) over a big range of the dimensionless distance (0.6 - 0.9) for both of the 50 μm and 500 μm sized laser-induced equal sized anti-phase bubble pairs.