Theoretical and Experimental Studies of Acoustic Reflection of Bubbly Liquid in Multilayer Media

Bubbly liquids are widely present in the natural environment and industrial fields, such as seawater near the ocean bottom, the multiphase flow in petroleum reservoirs, and the blood with bubbles resulting in decompression sickness. Therefore, accurate measurement of the gas content is of great significance for hydroacoustic physics, oil and gas resources exploration, and disease prevention and diagnosis. Trace bubbles in liquids can lead to considerable changes in the acoustic properties of gas–liquid two-phase media. Acoustic measurements can therefore be applied for trace bubble detection. This study derived the reflection coefficient of acoustic waves propagating in a sandwich layering model with liquid, bubbly liquid, and liquid. The influences of gas contents on the reflection coefficient at the layer interface were analyzed based on theoretical calculations. It was revealed that the magnitude of the reflection coefficient and the frequency interval between its valleys have a quantitative correlation with the gas contents. Thus, a novel means to detect the contents of trace bubbles was proposed by evaluating the reflection coefficients. The reflection features of a thin layer with bubbly liquid were then studied through experiments. It was validated by acoustical measurements and theories that the reflection coefficient is considerably sensitive to the change of gas contents as long as the gas content is tiny. With the increasing gas content, the maximum value of the reflection coefficient increases; meanwhile, the frequency intervals between the valleys become smaller. However, when the gas content is extensive enough, e.g., greater than 1%, the effect of the change of gas content on the reflection coefficient becomes inapparent. In that case, it is not easy to measure the gas content by the acoustic reflection signals with satisfying precision. This proposed method has potential applications for the detection of trace gas bubble content in several scenarios, e.g., decompression illness prevention and diagnosis

The Effect of Draft Ratio of Side-By-Side Barges on Fluid Oscillation in Narrow Gap

In the present study, the effects of the draft ratio of the floating body on the fluid oscillation in the gap are investigated by using the viscous fluid model. Numerical simulations are implemented by coupling wave2Foam and OpenFOAM. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) model is used to capture the free surface waves. It is verified that the numerical results agree well with the experimental and other results. It is firstly found that, within the water depth range investigated in the present study, the depth of the wave tank has a significant effect on the numerical results. As the depth of the wave tank increases, the oscillation amplitude of the narrow-gap fluid largely decreases and the resonant frequency of the fluid oscillation in the narrow gap increases. The results also reveal that the draft ratio of floating bodies has a significant nonlinear influence on the resonant frequency and on the oscillation amplitude of the fluid in the narrow gap. With an increase in the draft of either the floating body on the wave side or the one on the back wave side, the resonant frequency decreases. The increase in the draft of the floating body on the wave side causes an increase in the reflection wave coefficient and leads to a drop in the fluid oscillation amplitude, and the increase in the draft of the floating body on the back wave side triggers a decrease in the reflection wave coefficient and results in an increase in the fluid oscillation amplitude. Meanwhile, the viscous dissipation induced by the fluid viscosity synchronously increases with the oscillation amplitude of the fluid in the increasing gap. Moreover, it is found that the draft ratio mainly affects the horizontal force of the floating body on the back wave side and that the highest calculated force increases with the draft ratio

3D Numerical Simulations of Green Water Impact on Forward-Speed Wigley Hull Using Open Source Codes

A series of CFD RANS simulations are presented for Wigley hulls of two freeboard heights progressing with forward speed in waves. Free surface effects are captured using the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method embedded in open source software OpenFOAM. Comparisons of heave, pitch motions and added resistance of the first Wigley model against the experiments of Kashiwagi (2013) confirm the numerical validity of the hydrodynamic modelling approach. Further simulations for the lower-freeboard Wigley model reveal that the highest green water impact on decks appears in way of λ / L = 1.3 and at the highest instantaneous pitch amplitude where the water propagates far downstream and across the deck. The simulations also demonstrate that the green water events are associated with air bubble entrapment

Study of DC Magnetron Sputtered Nb Films

As Nb films are widely used as superconducting electrodes of Josephson junctions, it is important to investigate the properties of Nb films in order to fabricate high-quality Josephson junctions. In this work, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of the relationships among the properties of DC magnetron sputtered Nb films with a constant power fabricated at the National Institute of Metrology (China). The film properties, including superconductivity, stress, lattice constant, and surface roughness, were investigated. It was found that in the case of constant power and Ar pressure, the stress and other parameters of the Nb films can maintain a relatively stable state during the continuous consumption of the target material