Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 224, 415–424 (2015)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2015-02370-6

Regular Article

Interfacial instability of a condensing vapor bubble in a subcooled liquid

¹ Dept. Mechanical Engineering, Fac. Science & Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Chiba, Japan
² Research Institute for Science & Technology (RIST), Tokyo University of Science, Chiba, Japan

^a e-mail: ich@rs.tus.ac.jp

Received: 31 July 2014
Revised: 16 February 2015
Published online: 8 April 2015

Abstract

A special attention is paid to the condensing and collapsing processes of vapor bubble injected into a subcooled pool. We try to extract the vapor-liquid interaction by employing a vapor generator that supplies vapor to the subcooled pool through an orifice instead of using a immersed heating surface to realize vapor bubbles by boiling phenomenon. This system enables ones to detect a spatio-temporal behavior of a single bubble of superheated vapor exposed to a subcooled liquid. In the present study, vapor of water is injected through an orifice at constant flow rate to the subcooled pool of water at the designated degree of subcooling under the atmospheric pressure. The degree of subcooling of the pool is ranged from 0 K to 70 K, and the vapor temperature is kept constant at 101 ^∘C. The behaviors of the injected vapor are captured by high-speed camera at frame rate up to 0.3 million frame per second (fps) to track the temporal variation of the vapor bubble shape. It is found that the abrupt collapse of the vapor bubble exposed to the subcooled pool takes place under the condition that the degree of subcooling is greater than around 30 K, and that the abrupt collapse always takes place accompanying the fine disturbances or instability emerged on the free surface. We then evaluate a temporal variation of the apparent ‘volume’ of the bubble V under the assumption of the axisymmetric shape of the vapor bubble. It is also found that the instability emerges slightly after the volume of the vapor bubble reaches the maximum value. It is evaluated that the second derivative of the corresponding ‘radius’ R of the vapor bubble is negative when the instability appears on the bubble surface, where R = ³√ 3V/4π. We also illustrate that the wave number of the instability on the liquid-vapor interface increases as the degree of subcooling.