The Rayleigh collapse of two spherical bubbles

Abstract

The inertial collapse of two interacting and non-translating spherical bubbles of equal size is considered. The exact analytic solution to the nonlinear ordinary differential equation that governs the bubble radii during collapse is first obtained via a slowly converging power series. An asymptotic approximant is then constructed that accelerates convergence of the series and imposes the asymptotic collapse behavior when the radii are small. The solution generalizes the classical 1917 Rayleigh problem of single bubble collapse, as this configuration is recovered when the distance between the bubble centers far exceeds that of their radii.