A study on the estimation of bubble size distribution using an acoustic inversion method

This paper presents an acoustic inversion method for estimating the bubble size distribution. The estimation error of the attenuation coefficient represented by a Fredholm integral equation of the first kind is defined as an objective function, and an optimal solution is found by applying the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) method. In order to validate the effectiveness of the inversion method, numerical simulations using two types of bubble distribution are performed. In addition, a series of experiments are carried out in a water tank (1.0 m x 0.54 m x 0.6 m), using bubbles generated by three different generators. Images of the distributed bubbles are obtained by a high-speed camera, and the insertion losses of the bubble layer are measured using a source and a hydrophone. The image is post-processed to glance a distribution characteristics of each bubble generator. Finally, the size distribution of bubbles is estimated by applying the inversion method to the measured insertion loss. From the inversion results, it was observed that the number of bubbles increases exponentially as the bubble size decreases, and then increases again after the local peak at 70 mu m - 120 mu m.