Bubble interactions in liquid/gas flows

The system of equations, usually employed for unsteady liquid/gas flows, has complex characteristics. This as well as other facts have led to the search for a more accurate description of effects associated with relative motion. For liquid/bubble systems the fluctuations resulting from hydrodynamic interaction between the bubbles may be taken into account in the same way as particle interactions in the theory of viscous suspensions. This is illustrated for the pressure. In a description accurate up till the third power of the void fraction two-bubble interactions are of primary importance. Numerically obtained results for the relative motion in bubble pairs are presented and interpreted with help of simplified equations from which conclusions can be drawn in an analytic way.