Experimental study of bubble dynamics in the neighbourhood of a vertical incomplete boundary

•A new experimental set-up is devised to study the interaction of bubble and air-backed broken plate.•The bubble induced high-speed outrush water spike has the potential of damaging the structure inside the cabin.•The bubble beside the vertical air-water surface presents complex and peculiar behaviour. The bubbles have been widely used in biomedical field, military and chemical industry. The liquid jet generated by the bubble collapse through an orifice is utilized in needle-free injections and inkjet printing. In this paper we devised synchronized triggering equipment, experimentally investigated the mechanism in the interaction of an electric-spark generated a single bubble and a vertical wall with an air-back opening. Detailed observations were recorded and described for bubble oscillation, migration, jetting, as well as the high-speed water spike penetrating through the opening. The results revealed that there was a critical value of the bubble-wall distance, below which the bubble was directed away from the incomplete boundary, while the bubble may tear from the middle for larger distance. As the distance varied, we studied the volume of the water that rushed through the opening, the velocity at the tip of the water spike, and the center of the bubble as well as the migration of the bubble boundary. This work reveals that the high-speed water spike caused by the bubble may be a potential threat to the structures, specifically for cases with a small opening size and short bubble-boundary distance.