Modelling the interaction of bubbles with impulsive shockwaves

Understanding and modeling the response of bubbles to impulsive shock waves is important for various applications, including non-invasive medical treatments, cavitation damage, and industrial processing. In the context of medical treatments, this knowledge can lead to safer and more effective procedures such as ultrasound and shockwave therapies, which are used for tumor ablation, kidney stone fragmentation, tissue regeneration, pain management, and targeted drug delivery. We present results from a series of numerical simulations of bubbles subjected to impulsive shock waves with varying waveforms, widths, and peak pressures using ECOGEN, an open-source solver for compressible multiphase flows. We discuss the resulting collapse dynamics and the formation of jets that may lead to the ejection of smaller bubbles downstream, along with simple expressions to model these.