The dynamics and acoustic emission of two interacting cavitation bubbles exposed to strong acoustic fields with a frequency of 515 KHz are investigated numerically in this paper. After comparing the dynamics of a single bubble excited by the given pressure waves, bubbles with ambient radii of 2 and 5 μm were chosen to be studied to discuss the influence of the mutual bubble-bubble interaction on the dynamic behaviors and acoustic emission of the bubbles. The results show that, aside from the external driving pressure waves, the interaction between the bubbles imposes an extra nonlinear effect on the oscillations of the bubbles and that the dynamics of the smaller bubble could be suppressed gradually with the enhancement of this mutual interaction by decreasing the distance between the bubbles. Moreover, the improvement in the oscillation nonlinearity of the bubbles due to the change in the ambient circumstance could readily be observed from the frequency spectra of the bubbles’ acoustic emission, which interprets the change by exhibiting an appropriate development of the subharmonics, the ultraharmonics, and the broadband component.

• Received 27 November 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.036312