CRITICAL MICROJETS IN COLLAPSING CAVITIES

Inward microjets are commonly observed in collapsing cavities, but here we show that jets with exceptionally high velocities and accelerations occur in certain critical flows dividing jet formation from bubble pinch-off. An example of the phenomenon occurs in the family of hows which evolve from a certain class of initial conditions: the initial flow field is that due to a moving point sink within the cavity. A numerical study of the critical flow shows that in the neighbourhood of microjet formation the flow is self-similar. The local accelerations, velocities and distances scale as t(beta-2), t(beta-1) and t(beta) respectively, where beta = 0.575. The velocity potential is approximately a spherical harmonic of degree 1/4.