Experimental study on the effect of a deformable boundary on the collapse characteristics of a cavitation bubble

Abstract

Cavitation phenomena widely exist in many fields such as medical treatment, chemical engineering, and hydraulic engineering. The boundary properties have a great influence on the collapse characteristics of a cavitation bubble. The in-teraction between a cavitation bubble and a boundary of different properties is an important part in the cavitation erosion mechanism. In this paper, cavitation bubbles under in-water pulse discharge and cavitation erosion under ultrasonic vibration were used to study the effect of a deformable boundary on the collapse characteristics of a cavitation bubble, which reveals the cavitation-resistance performance of different materials on the macroscopic scale. The main experi-mental results showed that on a deformable boundary, the cavitation bubble does not collapse toward the boundary in the later collapse stage compared with on the rigid boundary. The collapse process of the cavitation bubble is aggravated on the deformable boundary. In the condition of same cavitation strength, the cavitation's erosion loss amount on the rigid boundary material is much higher than that on the deformable boundary material. The experimental conclusions have an important reference value for the development of cavitation erosion pre-vention and the exploration of cavitation-resistance materials.