Abstract: Acoustic streaming is the steady flow of a fluid that is caused by the propagation of sound\nthrough that fluid. The fluid flow in acoustic streaming is generated by a nonlinear, time-averaged\neffect that results from the spatial and temporal variations in a pressure field. When there is\nan oscillating body submerged in the fluid, such as a cavitation bubble, vorticity is generated\non the boundary layer on its surface, resulting in microstreaming. Although the effects are\ngenerated at the microscale, microstreaming can have a profound influence on the fluid mechanics of\nultrasound/acoustic processing systems, which are of high interest to sonochemistry, sonoprocessing,\nand acoustophoretic applications. The effects of microstreaming have been evaluated over the years\nusing carefully controlled experiments that identify and quantify the fluid motion at a small scale.\nThis mini-review article overviews the historical development of acoustic streaming, shows how\nmicrostreaming behaves, and provides an update on new numerical and experimental studies that\nseek to explore and improve our understanding of microstreaming.
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