A Unified Theory of Cavitation Damage

Abstract

The Cavitation Damage Number proposed by the author has been modified to incorporate the concept of strain-energy instead of the dynamic yield stress of the material. The correlation between the Cavitation Damage Number and the Number of Cavities has been extended to different materials and different sizes. A third nondimensional number known as the Inception of Damage Number has been derived and correlated with the critical cavitation parameter. Detailed investigations in the threshold zone indicate the validity of the functional relationship between the critical cavitation parameter and the Inception of Damage Number. In this paper, the part played by each parameter is analyzed and some of the experimental results arrived at by earlier investigators are explained in the light of the present theory.