| A bubble of gas, trapped at the center of a spherical container of liquid will oscillate when spherical sound waves are generated at the surface of the container. For decades, theoreticians have been improving the dynamical theory governing the motion of the gas. However, a complete theory does not yet exist. The goal of this dissertation is to provide several new results on this subject which we hope will help in completing the entire theory. Several different aspects of the bubble dynamics are investigated. They include: (1) the effect of thermal diffusion on the temperature variation at the gas-liquid interface, (2) the way that temperature and pressure change on the gas-liquid interface affects the diffusion of gas into and out of the bubble, (3) the way that the amount of vapor from the liquid present in the bubble influences the bubble dynamics and bubble surface temperature and (4) the shape stability of the bubble surface. Among these, investigations of (1), (2) and (3) are original while (4) is an extension of recent work by C. C. Wu & P. H. Roberts. |
