Cavitation Damage and Correlations With Material and Fluid Properties

Abstract

A comprehensive set of cavitation damage data has been obtained in a vibratory facility using water, mercury, lithium, and lead-bismuth alloy as test fluids, and covering temperatures ranging from room temperature to 1500 deg F. Materials tested include a wide variety of metals and alloys. From this data a simple, reasonably precise, damage predicting equation has been derived, including only ultimate resilience as a material property, but also corrections for cavitation “thermodynamic effects” and NPSH. It has been found that of the conventional mechanical properties, ultimate resilience is the most successful in this regard. A direct comparison between venturi and vibratory cavitation damage shows that the relative rankings of materials remain about the same for mercury, and a good correlation is obtained between the mercury data from the venturi and ultimate resilience. Neither statement applies for the water venturi data, possibly because of the greater effects of corrosion in the low intensity cavitation field.