Strong interaction between a buoyancy bubble and a free surface

The growth and collapse of buoyant vapor bubbles close to a free surface in an inviscid incompressible fluid is investigated in this paper. The strong interaction between the deforming bubble and the free surface is simulated numerically by a boundary-integral method (Taib 1985; Blake et al., 1987). Improvements are made in the calculation of the singular integrals, the use of nonuniform boundary elements, and the choice of time-step size. The present numerical results agree better with the experimental observations of Blake and Gibson (1981) than previous numerical predictions for bubbles initiated at one maximum radius from the free surface. There is also concurrence of flow features with the experiments for a bubble initiated as close as half maximum radius from the free surface, where other numerical efforts have failed. The effects of buoyancy on bubbles initiated close to a free surface are also investigated. Vastly different features, depending on the distance of the bubble to the free surface and the buoyancy-force parameter, have been observed.