Experimental study of non-uniform bubbles in a plume

The bubble plume is an important flow phenomenon, ubiquitous in many fields. The non-uniform bubbles in a plume are often simply considered as uniform and moving with a same slip velocity in an integral model. This study aims to have a better understanding of the behavior of the non-uniform bubbles in a plume. A set of experiments are conducted in a transparent water tank, in which the air plumes are generated through different injectors to vary the spectrum of the bubble size. The shadow images of the bubbles are simultaneously recorded with the illumination of a plane backlight. The algorithm used in the image analysis for tracing the bubbles is a newly developed multi-frame method based on the predictor-corrector method, with a good accuracy in estimating the size and the velocity of the overlapped bubbles based on the bubble shadow images. The bubbles are divided into several groups by their equivalent diameters with an interval of 0.5 mm. The spectrums of the bubble size and the void fraction are measured. It is found that the bubbles of different sizes show different dynamics features, resulting in a difference in the radial distribution. It is shown that the large bubbles gather in the center of the plume, while the medium bubbles spread the widest and even wider than the small bubbles. The difference can be explained by the effects of the transverse lift force and the amplitude of the bubble oscillation.