Stable bubble oscillations beyond Blake's critical threshold

The equilibrium radius of a single spherical bubble containing both non-condensable gas and vapor is determined by the mechanical balance at the bubble interface. This expression highlights the fact that decreasing the ambient pressure below the so called Blake's critical threshold, the bubble has no equilibrium state at all. In the last decade many authors have tried to find evidence for the existence of stable bubble oscillation under harmonic forcing in this regime, that is, they have tried to stabilize the bubble motion applying ultrasonic radiation on the bubble. The available numerical results provide only partial proof for the existence as they are usually based on linearized or weakly nonlinear (higher order approximation) bubble models. Here, based on numerical techniques of the modern nonlinear and bifurcation theory, the existence of stable bubble motion has been proven without any restrictions in nonlinearities. Although the model, applied in this paper, is the rather simple Rayleigh-Plesset equation, the presented technique can be extended to more complex bubble models easily. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.