Cavitation in a liquid-filled cavity surrounded by an elastic medium: Intercoupling of cavitation events in neighboring cavities.

The subject of the present theoretical study is the dynamics of a cavitation bubble in a spherical liquid-filled cavity surrounded by an infinite elastic solid. Two objectives are pursued. The first is to derive equations for the velocity and pressure fields throughout the liquid filling the cavity and equations for the stress and strain fields throughout the solid medium surrounding the cavity. This derivation is based on the results of our previous paper [A. A. Doinikov et al., Phys. Rev. E 97, 013108 (2018)10.1103/PhysRevE.97.013108], where equations for the evolution of a bubble inside a cavity were derived. The second objective is to apply the equations obtained at the first step of the study to ascertain if the cavitation process in one cavity can trigger the nucleation in a neighboring cavity. To this end, we consider a neighboring cavity in which a cavitation bubble is absent. We derive equations that describe the disturbance of the liquid pressure inside the second cavity, assuming this disturbance to be caused by the cavitation process in the first cavity. The developed theory is then used to perform numerical simulations. The results of the simulations show that the magnitude of the background negative pressure inside the second cavity increases at the second half period of the pressure disturbance, which in turn enhances the probability of nucleation in the second cavity.