Cavitation Erosion in Nonaqueous Liquids

Abstract

Cavitation erosion rates in the organic liquids formamide, ethanol, acetone, and glycerol are compared with the rate in distilled water. As is to be expected, these non-ionizing liquids, which are chemically less reactive with metals than water, show lower damage rates. The cavitation damage rates have also been measured for solutions of these organic liquids in water and all these solutions show a monotonic decrease in going from pure water to the pure organic liquid except glycerol. The water-glycerol solutions go through a minimum damage rate for a solution with molecular ratio of glycerol to water of approximately 1 to 1. Solutions of ethanol in glycerol show a maximum in damage rate for a solution with molecular ratio, glycerol/ethanol, of about 2 to 1. Qualitative differences in the cavitation bubble cloud in the various liquids studied are indicated by short-exposure photographs.