Acoustic Streaming Induced by a Focused Ultrasound Beam

Application ID: 71441


Acoustic streaming, a steady flow induced by sound waves, has been used in biomedical and engineering industrial., Examples include enhancement of convective heat transfer, ultrasonic cleaning, localized micro-mixing, hemolysis of blood cells, and micropumps etc. The phenomenon is manifested as a momentum transfer from sound waves to fluid motion. When ultrasound is propagating in an absorbing fluid, bulk movement of the medium is induced as a by-product of sound absorption. This can occur in a bulk fluid volume due to bulk viscous damping or near a boundary due to thermoviscous damping near walls. The streaming velocity scales roughly with the sound intensity, and thus can be more prominent in a focused ultrasound beam. This model demonstrates how to model acoustic streaming in a focused ultrasound beam in an unbounded fluid.

This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products: