Breakup of finite thickness viscous shell microbubbles by ultrasound: a simplified zero-thickness shell model

A simplified three-dimensional (3-D) zero-thickness shell model was developed to recover the non-spherical response of thick-shelled encapsulated microbubbles subjected to ultrasound excitation. The model was validated by comparison with previously developed models and was then used to study the mechanism of bubble break-up during non-spherical deformations resulting from the presence of a nearby rigid boundary. The effects of the shell thickness and the bubble standoff distance from the solid wall on the bubble break-up were studied parametrically for a fixed insonification frequency and amplitude. A diagram of bubble shapes versus the normalized shell thickness and wall standoff was derived, and the potential bubble shapes at break-up from reentrant jets were categorized resulting in four distinct zones.