Stability of bubbly liquids and its connection to the process of cavitation inception

This paper presents a potential energy approach for the investigation of the stability of bubbly liquids. Using the system's free energy variations with respect to the void fraction as a stability criterion for the whole system, we consider that sudden bubble expansion occurs only when the bubble cluster expansion is energetically favorable. The results obtained provide new insight into the behavior of pre-nucleated liquids when the inception point is reached as well as a simple method to estimate the energy exchanges between a bubble cluster and its environment when the kinetic energy is negligible compared to the elastic energy stored during tension and compression processes. In addition to the radius of the initial nuclei, the concentration and polydispersity are shown to exert an important influence on the response of the system after inception.