Acoustic interaction forces and torques acting on suspended spheres in an ideal fluid

Abstract

In this paper, the acoustic interaction forces and torques exerted by an arbitrary time-harmonic wave on a set of N spheres suspended in an inviscid fluid are theoretically analyzed. In so doing, we utilize the partial-wave expansion method to solve the related multiple scattering problem. The acoustic interaction force and torque are computed for a sphere using the farfield radiation force and torque formulas. To exemplify the method, we calculate the interaction forces exerted by an external traveling and standing plane wave on an arrangement of two and three olive-oil droplets in water. The droplets radii are comparable to the wavelength (i.e. Mie scattering regime). The results show that the radiation force may considerably deviates from that exerted solely by the external incident wave. In addition, we find that acoustic interaction torques arise on the droplets when a nonsymmetric effective incident wave interacts with the droplets.