• Louisnard, Olivier
• Espitalier, Fabienne
• Montes, William
• Baillon, Fabien
• Boyer, Bruno

Abstract

The application of power ultrasound in liquids produces thousands of bubbles. This phenomenon is called acoustic cavitation. The bubbles formed do not have the same size, their oscillations are not in phase, and their spatial density in the fluid is very not homogeneous: this phenomenon is thus very complex and involves multiple variables which are very difficult to isolate. Even if the phenomenon is chaotic, its macroscopic effects on the nucleation and growth of of ice crystals in undercooled solutions are noticeable. These effects have a crucial importance for industrial applications such as freezing and lyophilisation (also called freeze drying) of pharmaceutics products. Although the effects of ultrasound on crystallization are well-known, their physical origin remains unclear. Multi-bubble experiments do not give any hint in the microscopic mechanisms involved. Therefore, in order to isolate the main actor of these effects, this study aims at creating and observing a single cavitation bubble. To do so, a cubic levitation cell with optical glass walls was build. In this cell, in order to maintain a single bubble levitating, a pressure wave is imposed by a piezoelectric ceramic glued to the base of the cell. A piezoelectric microphone is also glued on the lateral wall in order to record the bubble response, which is strongly linked to the bubble dynamics. The presence or appearance of any foreign body near the levitating bubble may perturb the latter and alter the periodicity of its oscillation. We wish to exploit this loss of periodicity for early detection of crystals nucleation near the bubble. As a preliminary step, to simulate the later, a micro-fiber of diameter smaller than 50 μm is approached to the bubble. By performing an autocorrelation study of the microphone signal, we can detect the perturbation of the periodicity of the bubble dynamics. In a second step, crystallization experiments will be conducted, and the detection principle will be used to trigger the recording of images in the early phase of the crystals formation.

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• phase
• experiment
• glass
• glass
• ceramic
• crystallization
• drying