A CFD Simulation of Bubble Burst at Free Surface

In this paper, computational fluid dynamics modeling techniques to simulate the bubble bursting process and its ability to simulate the production of droplets for different bubble sizes are presented. A closed chamber is filled with fluid and air with the presence of bubbles in the fluid. The rising bubble eventually floats on the free surface forming a thin cap with a typical thickness of the order of 1 µm. To track the bubble cap, the mesh size must be reduced at least 10 times. In the current work, 2 droplets were obtained as a result of the bubble burst. This is encouraging numerical modeling results; however, the results are not sufficient for quantitative entrainment ratio analysis. The present work has emphasized the need for significantly higher computational power for a thorough analysis. The future work will focus on the simulation of a single bubble, of various sizes, rising and bursting at the free surface. Each bubble size would correspond to a flow regime of a discrete bubble column.