8. Pressure Blocking Effect in a Growing Vapor Bubble

The phenomenon of gas (vapor) bubbles in a liquid, in spite of the fluctuation character of their nucleation and the short lifetime, has a wide spectrum of manifestations: underwater acoustics, sonoluminescence, ultrasonic diagnostics, decreasing friction by surface nanobubbles, nucleate boiling, etc. (Lohse in Nonlinear Phenom Complex Syst 9:125–132, 2006 [1]). Such exotic manifestations of the bubble behavior as a micropiston injection of droplets in jet printing and the spiral rise path of bubbles in a liquid (the Leonardo da Vinci paradox) permitted the authors of (Straub in Adv Heat Transf 35:157–172, 2001) [2] to speak of “bubble puzzles.” The most important application of the bubble dynamics is the effervescence of a liquid superheated with respect to the saturation temperature. The liquid retains thereby the properties of the initial phase but becomes unstable (or metastable). The result of the demonstration of metastability of the liquid is the initiation and growth of nuclei of a new (vapor) phase in it. An ideal subject of investigation of this phenomenon is the spherically asymmetric growth of the vapor bubble in the volume of a uniformly superheated liquid. However, the experimental realization of such a process presents great challenges.