Theory of Nonlinear Acoustic Forces Acting on Inhomogeneous Fluids

Abstract

Recently, the phenomena of streaming suppression and relocation of inhomogeneous miscible fluids under acoustic fields were explained using the hypothesis on mean Eulerian pressure. In this letter, we show that this hypothesis is unsound and any assumption on mean Eulerian pressure is needless. We present a theory of non-linear acoustics for inhomogeneous fluids from the first principles, which explains streaming suppression and acoustic relocation in both miscible and immiscible inhomogeneous fluids inside a microchannel. This theory predicts the relocation of higher impedance fluids to pressure nodes of the standing wave, which agrees with the recent experiments.