A new phenomenon in ultrasonic cavitation field is reported. Cavitation bubbles are observed to self-arrange in a cone-like macrostructure in the vicinity of transducer radiating surface. The cone-like macrostructure is stable while its branch-like pattern microstructure changes rapidly. The structure is constituted by moving bubbles which undergo attractive and repulsive Bjerknes forces caused by high acoustic pressure gradients and strongly nonlinear oscillations of cavitation bubbles. The cone-like bubble structure is a chemically active formation. Its remarkably high activity is confirmed by chemiluminescence experiments.

A new phenomenon of self-induced hysteresis has been observed in the interaction of bulk acoustic waves with a cracked solid. It consists in a hysteretic behavior of material nonlinearity as a function of the incident pump wave amplitude. Hysteresis manifests itself in the self-action of the monochromatic pump wave and in the excitation of its superharmonics and of its subharmonics. The proposed theoretical models attribute the phenomenon to hysteresis in transition of the acoustically forced oscillation of cracks from a nonclapping regime to a regime of clapping contacts.

The cavitation field radiated by a 20 kHz sonotrode-type transducer is experimentally and theoretically analyzed. Special interest is paid to the origin of the strong fluid streaming appearing in low frequency sonoreactors. A new experimental procedure is proposed to evaluate the mean acoustic pressure inside the fluid. This parameter has been quantified for different points and amplitudes. The velocity of the radiating surface is controlled by a laser interferometer and is always sinusoidal. Train wave excitation is used. The pressure wave and amplitude are measured in the tank with a calibrated hydrophone. The acoustic mean pressure is estimated from the total pressure value at the end of the pulse after an adequate filtering. An analytical nonlinear second order model based on the coupling of the equations of the fluid mechanics with the Rayleigh-Plesset equation is developed in order to relate the measured acoustic parameters to the cavitation state of the fluid. The distributions of the fundamental amplitude and mean pressure are calculated as a function of bubble density and bubble size. A qualitative theoretical description of the experimental data is presented. Quantitative differences and model limitations are commented.