Oct 2024
Abstract
Cavitation, a formation of small vapor bubbles inside an initially homogeneous liquid medium, can occur on different complexity scales - the simplest one being a single cavitation bubble. Yet, even here a plethora of phenomena are present.
In the 60', the first recordings of the bubble collapse by a high-speed camera, revealed a formation of high-velocity jets (>100m/s) directed toward the nearby solid surface. These was associated with one of the most ubiquitous issues of cavitation – cavitation erosion, which causes failure of pumps, turbines, marine propellers and even rocket engine turbopumps.
In the talk we will discuss recent developments understanding the interaction of a single cavitation bubble with i) a rigid surface, ii) a complient structure and iii) the bubble collapse in broken symmetry conditions. The results show a promisse of controlling the bubble shape and the collapse direction, which may lead to technology developments in engineering, chemistry and medicine.
Biography
Prof. Dr. Matevž Dular is one of the youngest full professors at the University of Ljubljana (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering). He has worked in Germany, France and the USA for more than five years. For seven years, he led two projects for the European Space Agency (ESA), where they developed methods for better understanding and prediction of the thermodynamic effects during pumping of fuel and oxidizer in rocket engines. In 2019, he received the Zois recognition for his scientific achievements and in 2020 he received the prestigious Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2017, only as the fifth researcher in Slovenia, he obtained a project from the European Research Council (ERC), where he is researching the possibilities of environmentally friendly destruction of bacteria and viruses by cavitation. In 2022 he received the second ERC project, which finances proof of concept for wastewater sludge treatment by cavitation.