Bubble nucleation from micro-crevices in a shear flow

The formation of gas bubbles at gas cavities located in walls bounding the flow occurs in many technical applications, but is usually hard to observe. Even though, the presence of a fluid flow undoubtedly affects the formation of bubbles, there are very few studies that take this fact into account. In the present paper new experimental results on bubble formation (diffusion-driven nucleation) from surface nuclei in a shear flow are presented. The observed gas-filled cavities are micrometre-sized blind holes etched in silicon substrates. We measure the frequency of bubble generation (nucleation rate), the size of the detaching bubbles and analyse the growth of the surface nuclei. The experimental findings support an extended understanding of bubble formation as a self-excited cyclic process and can serve as validation data for analytical and numerical models.