What is it about?
Cavitation bubbles in water grow from gaseous nuclei at exposure to sufficient tensile stress, but their stabilization has been a subject of debate for a century. Experiments indicate that a skin covering these nuclei, and which allows gas diffusion between the bubble and the surrounding water, is the stabilizing factor. A recent theoretical approach opens for an understanding of a wide range of the experimental results for cavitation inception, published over the years.
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Why is it important?
It is important to know why in technical applications water has a low and shifting tensile strength, while theoretically its tensile strength is extremely high.
Perspectives
I started 50 years ago studying cavitation erosion experimentally. It lead to a model of cavity cluster collapse explaining why such collapse is much more erosive than that of a single cavitation bubble. But how do the cavitation bubbles arise? It lead to studies of water-solid interfaces by scanning probe microscopy techniques - and now our recent understanding of bubble nuclei allows us to proceed into disclosing the mysteries of cavitation inception in hydraulic systems.
Dr Knud Aage Mørch
Danmarks Tekniske Universitet
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cavitation inception from bubble nuclei, Interface Focus, August 2015, Royal Society Publishing,
DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2015.0006.
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