Cavitation In Liquids Research Articles

Cavitation erosion of low-density polyethylene coatings for pipe liners

The relationship between mechanical properties and the erosion rate was examined for chloroprene rubber and a number of polyethylene materials produced by different methods. As electric power plants are in operation over long periods of time, the effect of aging was also examined by testing material intended for use in pipes in electric power plants. Cavitation erosion tests were carried out by using a flowing apparatus as specified in the American Society for Testing Materials G134-95 standard. A flow velocity of 150 m/s and a test time of 24hours, were the experimental conditions used for a cavitating liquid jet test on polyethylene. The maximum depth of erosion rate (MaxDER) of polyethylene was found to decrease with the increase in hardness. Among all the tested materials, the relatively high molecular weight polyethylene with low density (m-LLDPE-H), showed the best resistance to cavitation erosion in terms of MaxDER. The effect of aging on the erosion rate of polyethylene was limited.

Empty cavity in a cavitating liquid: Features of flow structure

Problem of empty cavity dynamics in a two-phase medium is considered. The initial equilibrium state of “cavity-medium” system is disturbed when pressure inside cavity falls abruptly up to 0. Rarefaction wave arising on an interface initiates a cavitation development. Two-phase mathematical model is applied to investigate the medium state dynamics. The medium parameters correspond to a distilled water state: microbubbles, 1.5 μm, their density 106 cm-3, and gas concentration, about 10-5. The numerical analysis has shown that interface “cavity-medium” becomes a cavitating spherical layer. The concluding process of cavity collapse can be characterized by two stages. First, the interface as a spherical layer in a result of its cumulation is transformed into a spherical bubbly cluster with 1 mm radius. Cluster contains 2.5·105 см-3 microbubbles with 40 μm radii. Gas concentration is distributed from 20%,cluster center, up to 1% on its surface. Second, the cumulation of flow on the spherical bubbly cluster will...

A GPU based compressible multiphase hydrocode for modelling violent hydrodynamic impact problems

This paper presents a GPU based compressible multiphase hydrocode for modelling violent hydrodynamic impacts under harsh conditions such as slamming and underwater explosion. An effort is made to extend a one-dimensional five-equation reduced model (Kapila et al., 2001) to compute three-dimensional hydrodynamic impact problems on modern graphics hardware. In order to deal with free-surface problems such as water waves, gravitational terms, which are initially absent from the original model, are now considered and included in the governing equations. A third-order finite volume based MUSCL scheme is applied to discretise the integral form of the governing equations. The numerical flux across a mesh cell face is estimated by means of the HLLC approximate Riemann solver. The serial CPU program is firstly parallelised on multi-core CPUs with the OpenMP programming model and then further accelerated on many-core graphics processing units (GPUs) using the CUDA C programming language. To balance memory usage, computing efficiency and accuracy on multi- and many-core processors, a mixture of single and double precision floating-point operations is implemented. The most important data like conservative flow variables are handled with double-precision dynamic arrays, whilst all the other variables/arrays like fluxes, residual and source terms are treated in single precision. Several benchmark test cases including water-air shock tubes, one-dimensional liquid cavitation tube, dam break, 2D cylindrical underwater explosion near a planar rigid wall, 3D spherical explosion in a rigid cylindrical container and water entry of a 3D rigid flat plate have been calculated using the present approach. The obtained results agree well with experiments, exact solutions and other independent numerical computations. This demonstrates the capability of the present approach to deal with not only violent free-surface impact problems but also hull cavitation associated with underwater explosions. Performance analysis reveals that the running time cost of numerical simulations is dramatically reduced by use of GPUs with much less consumption of electrical energy than on the CPU.

Fluctuation emergence of bubbles under a rapid drop of pressure in a liquid

Explosive cavitation at the front of a negative-pressure pulse has been studied. Conditions for the emergence of bubbles by the mechanism of homogeneous fluctuation nucleation were identified. Those conditions feature a high rate of the phase transformation, with the vapor formation process being concentrated in time at the instant of attainment of a certain pressure. Under such conditions, the liquid cavitation strength is maximal, and its value can be predicted by the homogeneous nucleation theory. For implementing the regime with high nucleation frequency, a method based on passing a negative-pressure pulse across a region with locally heated liquid was employed. The cavitation kinetics was examined by monitoring the perturbation of the heat flow from a miniature heater. The experimental data were generalized using the theory of explosive vapor formation in shock boiling mode. A method for calculating the cavitation in the regime of the fluctuation emergence of bubbles was approbated.

Prediction of the acoustic and bubble fields in insonified freeze-drying vials

The acoustic field and the location of cavitation bubble are computed in vials used for freeze-drying, insonified from the bottom by a vibrating plate. The calculations rely on a nonlinear model of sound propagation in a cavitating liquid [Louisnard, Ultrason. Sonochem., 19, (2012) 56–65]. Both the vibration amplitude and the liquid level in the vial are parametrically varied. For low liquid levels, a threshold amplitude is required to form a cavitation zone at the bottom of the vial. For increasing vibration amplitudes, the bubble field slightly thickens but remains at the vial bottom, and the acoustic field saturates, which cannot be captured by linear acoustics. On the other hand, increasing the liquid level may promote the formation of a secondary bubble structure near the glass wall, a few centimeters below the free liquid surface. These predictions suggest that rather complex acoustic fields and bubble structures can arise even in such small volumes. As the acoustic and bubble fields govern ice nucleation during the freezing step, the final crystal’s size distribution in the frozen product may crucially depend on the liquid level in the vial.

Bubble dynamics in a viscoelastic medium with nonlinear elasticity

AbstractIn a variety of recently developed medical procedures, bubbles are formed directly in soft tissue and may cause damage. While cavitation in Newtonian liquids has received significant attention, bubble dynamics in tissue, a viscoelastic medium, remains poorly understood. To model tissue, most previous studies have focused on Maxwell-based viscoelastic fluids. However, soft tissue generally possesses an original configuration to which it relaxes after deformation. Thus, a Kelvin–Voigt-based viscoelastic model is expected to be a more appropriate representation. Furthermore, large oscillations may occur, thus violating the infinitesimal strain assumption and requiring a nonlinear/finite-strain elasticity description. In this article, we develop a theoretical framework to simulate spherical bubble dynamics in a viscoelastic medium with nonlinear elasticity. Following modern continuum mechanics formalism, we derive the form of the elastic forces acting on a bubble for common strain-energy functions (e.g. neo-Hookean, Mooney–Rivlin) and incorporate them into Rayleigh–Plesset-like equations. The main effects of nonlinear elasticity are to reduce the violence of the collapse and rebound for large departures from the equilibrium radius, and increase the oscillation frequency. The present approach can readily be extended to other strain-energy functions and used to compute the stress/deformation fields in the surrounding medium.

Homogeneous two-dimensional nucleation of guest-free silicon clathrates

The difficulty in synthesizing guest-free semiconductor clathrates complicates the process of determining how these cage-like structures form. This work studies the microscopic mechanism of the nucleation of guest-free Si136 clathrate using molecular dynamics simulations with the Stillinger–Weber potential. The homogeneous nucleation of Si136, which is realized in a narrow negative pressure range before liquid cavitation, exhibits the characteristic feature of the two-dimensional (2D) mode. The critical nucleus is composed of one to two five-membered rings, and the nucleation barrier is close to 1 kBT. According to a thermodynamic model based on atomistic nucleation theory, the effective binding energy associated with the formation of 2D critical nuclei is significantly low, which is responsible for the low nucleation barrier of Si136 clathrate. In the post-nucleation period, the critical nucleus preferentially grows into a dodecahedron, and the latter continuously grows with sharing face along 〈1 1 0〉.

The Development of Ejection Reagent Input in Water Treatment Systems

The universal ejection scheme of the reagent's preparation and input is offered in this work, wherein hydrodynamic jet-mixing devices are used. Ejectors in the system act as mixing devices, batchers and cavitators at the same time. It is possible to obtain cavitation (two-phase) liquid flow mode, basing on the assessment of cavitation number. Principle scheme of the reseach unit is offered for modelling and water treatment. In this scheme the module for reagents and air ejection is used. Furthermore, the calculation of water-moderated and water-air ejectors, working in the cavitation mode, was performed on the base of empiric equations.

Novel hydrothermodynamic food processing technology

A novel hydrothermodynamic (HTD) technology for simultaneous crushing, homogenizing and pasteurization of whole food in a turbulent flow as a single-unit operation was developed. The HTD technology is based on the phenomena of high turbulence and cavitation in viscous liquids. HTD differs from hydrodynamic (HD) cavitation because it fully utilizes heat generated in the turbulent flow for product pasteurization. Pilot-scale HTD processing of whole blueberry resulted in homogeneous suspension with 13% solids, 1.45–2.76Pas viscosity, stable texture and low sedimentation. HTD processing minimized effect of thermal degradation of bioactive phenolics and increased shelf-life of pasteurized blueberry food. Pasteurization at 95°C provided <10CFU/g microbial load, which was satisfactory for long-term storage. This research proved the potential of HTD technology for manufacturing of innovative natural whole foods with high nutritional and nutraceutical values.

Detecting vapour bubbles in simulations of metastable water.

The investigation of cavitation in metastable liquids with molecular simulations requires an appropriate definition of the volume of the vapour bubble forming within the metastable liquid phase. Commonly used approaches for bubble detection exhibit two significant flaws: first, when applied to water they often identify the voids within the hydrogen bond network as bubbles thus masking the signature of emerging bubbles and, second, they lack thermodynamic consistency. Here, we present two grid-based methods, the M-method and the V-method, to detect bubbles in metastable water specifically designed to address these shortcomings. The M-method incorporates information about neighbouring grid cells to distinguish between liquid- and vapour-like cells, which allows for a very sensitive detection of small bubbles and high spatial resolution of the detected bubbles. The V-method is calibrated such that its estimates for the bubble volume correspond to the average change in system volume and are thus thermodynamically consistent. Both methods are computationally inexpensive such that they can be used in molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations of cavitation. We illustrate them by computing the free energy barrier and the size of the critical bubble for cavitation in water at negative pressure.

Shock loading and destruction of a deformable medium in a volume of cavitating liquid

The analysis of local processes of shock interaction and destruction of a damageable deformable medium which is in a cavitating liquid flow is accomplished. It is based on the results of studying local hydrodynamic flows in two-phase liquids. The results are determined by fluctuations of gas bubbles due to limit transitions which occur against the background of the propagation of shock waves in the liquid.

Cavitation in a metallic liquid: homogeneous nucleation and growth of nanovoids.

Large-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed to investigate homogeneous nucleation and growth of nanovoids during cavitation in liquid Cu. We characterize in detail the atomistic cavitation processes by following the temporal evolution of cavities or voids, analyze the nucleation behavior with the mean first-passage time (MFPT) and survival probability (SP) methods, and discuss the results against classical nucleation theory (CNT), the Tolman equation for surface energy, independent calculation of surface tension via integrating the stress profiles, the Johnson-Mehl-Avrami (JMA) growth law, and the power law for nucleus size distributions. Cavitation in this representative metallic liquid is a high energy barrier Poisson processes, and the steady-state nucleation rates obtained from statistical runs with the MFPT and SP methods are in agreement. The MFPT method also yields the critical nucleus size and the Zeldovich factor. Fitting with the Tolman's equation to the MD simulations yields the surface energy of a planar interface (~0.9 J m⁻²) and the Tolman length (0.4-0.5 Å), and those values are in accord with those from integrating the stress profiles of a planar interface. Independent CNT predictions of the nucleation rate (10(33 - 34) s(-1) m(-3)) and critical size (3-4 Å in radius) are in agreement with the MFPT and SP results. The JMA law can reasonably describe the nucleation and growth process. The size distribution of subcritical nuclei appears to follow a power law with an exponent decreasing with increasing tension owing to coupled nucleation and growth, and that of the supercritical nuclei becomes flattened during further stress relaxation due to void coalescence.

Modeling cavitation in a rapidly changing pressure field – Application to a small ultrasonic horn

Ultrasonic horn transducers are frequently used in applications of acoustic cavitation in liquids. It has been observed that if the horn tip is sufficiently small and driven at high amplitude, cavitation is very strong, and the tip can be covered entirely by the gas/vapor phase for longer time intervals. A peculiar dynamics of the attached cavity can emerge with expansion and collapse at a self-generated frequency in the subharmonic range, i.e. below the acoustic driving frequency. The term “acoustic supercavitation” was proposed for this type of cavitation Žnidarčič et al. (2014) [1].We tested several established hydrodynamic cavitation models on this problem, but none of them was able to correctly predict the flow features. As a specific characteristic of such acoustic cavitation problems lies in the rapidly changing driving pressures, we present an improved approach to cavitation modeling, which does not neglect the second derivatives in the Rayleigh–Plesset equation. Comparison with measurements of acoustic supercavitation at an ultrasonic horn of 20kHz frequency revealed a good agreement in terms of cavity dynamics, cavity volume and emitted pressure pulsations.The newly developed cavitation model is particularly suited for simulation of cavitating flow in highly fluctuating driving pressure fields.

Spontaneous cavitation in a Lennard-Jones liquid at negative pressures

We report a molecular dynamics (MD) study of homogeneous bubble nucleation in a Lennard-Jones liquid under a negative pressure (cavitation). The rate of bubble nucleation has been determined in the range 2 x 10(-9) < J(*) = Jσ(4)(m/ε)(1/2) < 6 x 10(-6) by the mean lifetime method at temperatures T(*) = kBT/ε = 0.35, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8. In molecular dynamics simulation calculations have also been made of the coefficient of bubble size diffusion, the Zeldovich nonequilibrium factor, and the radius of a critical nucleus R*. Different approaches to the determination of the nucleation rate in a stretched liquid have been considered in the framework of classical nucleation theory (CNT). The values of J obtained in MD simulation are by 8-20 orders higher than those predicted by CNT. The work of formation of a critical bubble and the dependence of surface tension γ(R*) at the critical bubble-liquid interface have been determined by data of MD simulation from CNT. The values of γ obtained have been approximated by an extended Tolman formula that takes into account, besides a linear correction, also the quadratic in curvature terms. The Tolman length δ∞ is negative and equals -(0.1-0.2)σ. The coefficient at 1/R*(2) is positive and does not exceed σ(2).

Influence of grain orientation on the local deformation mode induced by cavitation erosion in a CuSnNi alloy

The local deformation induced by vibratory cavitation erosion in a CuSnNi alloy was studied employing electron back-scattering diffraction and three-dimensional profiling. The study focused on evaluating initial plastic deformation corresponding to a group of 57 grains in order to correlate crystal orientation and local deformation morphologies. While detectable slip markings developed in grains oriented close to the 〈111〉 and 〈101〉 crystallographic directions during the incubation phase of the cavitation test, grains oriented close to 〈001〉 exhibited no visible slip markings and extensive formation of craters and hills. Furthermore, an analysis based on the average Schmid factors calculated for each grain satisfactorily reflects the transition for the mentioned deformation modes. The quantitative evaluation of the Schmid factor for all slip systems suggests a novel interpretation of the degradation phenomena observed in face-centered cubic materials exposed to a cavitating liquid.

Simulating cavitating liquid jets using a compressible and equilibrium two-phase flow solver

In internal combustion engines the injection of high-pressure liquid fuel into a low-pressure gas through a nozzle passage is an important process to atomize the liquid and achieve optimal fuel–air mixing. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is developed in the present work to simulate the internal- and external-nozzle flow fields in an integrated way. The model assumes that the flow within and near the nozzle is continuous, and an Eulerian flow solver is developed using the general conservation laws of fluid dynamics. Differences in the thermodynamic states of the liquid and gas phases are modeled with a Stiffened Gas Equation of State (EOS). A practical phase equilibrium solver is developed, and is implemented into the Eulerian flow solver to predict phase changes in the flows – in particular, cavitation of the liquid within the injector nozzle passage. The combined equilibrium solver is applied to single-component and two component flows with one component being non-condensable air. A number of test problems are simulated to verify the numerical methods and validate the proposed models. These include two-phase shock tube problems, a converging–diverging nozzle flow problem, a submerged liquid jet problem, and a cavitating liquid jet problem.

Attached cavitation at a small diameter ultrasonic horn tip

Ultrasonic horn transducers are frequently used in applications of acoustic cavitation in liquids, for instance, for cell disruption or sonochemical reactions. They are operated typically in the frequency range up to about 50 kHz and have tip diameters from some mm to several cm. It has been observed that if the horn tip is sufficiently small and driven at high amplitude, cavitation is very strong, and the tip can be covered entirely by the gas/vapor phase for longer time intervals. A peculiar dynamics of the attached cavity can emerge with expansion and collapse at a self-generated frequency in the subharmonic range, i.e., below the acoustic driving frequency. Here, we present a systematic study of the cavitation dynamics in water at a 20 kHz horn tip of 3 mm diameter. The system was investigated by high-speed imaging with simultaneous recording of the acoustic emissions. Measurements were performed under variation of acoustic power, air saturation, viscosity, surface tension, and temperature of the liquid. Our findings show that the liquid properties play no significant role in the dynamics of the attached cavitation at the small ultrasonic horn. Also the variation of the experimental geometry, within a certain range, did not change the dynamics. We believe that the main two reasons for the peculiar dynamics of cavitation on a small ultrasonic horn are the higher energy density on a small tip and the inability of the big tip to “wash” away the gaseous bubbles. Calculation of the somewhat adapted Strouhal number revealed that, similar to the hydrodynamic cavitation, values which are relatively low characterize slow cavitation structure dynamics. In cases where the cavitation follows the driving frequency this value lies much higher – probably at Str &amp;gt; 20. In the spirit to distinguish the observed phenomenon with other cavitation dynamics at ultrasonic transducer surfaces, we suggest to term the observed phenomenon of attached cavities partly covering the full horn tip as “acoustic supercavitation.” This reflects the conjecture that not the sound field in terms of acoustic (negative) pressure in the liquid is responsible for nucleation, but the motion of the transducer surface.

Ultrasonic Cavitation Peening of Stainless Steel and Nickel Alloy

Ultrasonic cavitation peening is a peening process utilizing the high pressure induced by ultrasonic cavitation in liquids (typically water). In this paper, ultrasonic cavitation peening on stainless steel and nickel alloy has been studied. The workpiece surface microhardness, the microhardness variation at different depths, the workpiece surface profile, roughness, and morphology have been measured or observed. It has been found that for the studied situations, ultrasonic cavitation peening (at a sufficiently high horn vibration amplitude) can obviously enhance the workpiece surface hardness without significantly increasing the surface roughness. Under the investigated conditions, a surface layer of more than around 50 μm has been hardened under a horn vibration amplitude of ∼20 μm.

Richtmyer–Meshkov instability of a liquid–gas interface driven by a cylindrical imploding pressure wave

The compression of a cylindrical gas bubble by an imploding molten lead (Pb) shell may be accompanied by the development of the Richtmyer–Meshkov (RM) instability at the liquid–gas interface due to the initial imperfection of the interface. A converging pressure wave impinging upon the interface causes a shell of liquid to detach and continue to travel inwards, compressing the gas bubble. The efficiency of compression and collapse evolution can be affected by development of the RM instability. Investigations have been performed in the regime of extreme Atwood number A=-1 with the additional complexity of modeling liquid cavitation in the working fluid. Simulations have been carried out using the open source CFD software OpenFOAM on a set of parameters relevant to the prototype compression system under development at General Fusion Inc. for use as a Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) driver.After validating the numerical setup in planar geometry, simulations have been carried out in 2D cylindrical geometry for both initially smooth and perturbed interfaces. Where possible, results have been validated against existing theoretical models and very good agreement has been found. While our main focus is on the effects of initial perturbation amplitude and azimuthal mode number, we also address differences between this problem and those usually considered, such as RM instability at an interface between two gases with a moderate density ratio. One important difference is the formation of narrow molten lead jets rapidly propagating inwards during the final stages of the collapse. Jet behavior has been observed for a range of azimuthal mode numbers and perturbation amplitudes.

A hydrodynamic X-ray radiation source

The results of experimental investigation of a flow of a weakly conductive liquid in a coaxial channel with insulating walls are presented. The possibility of forming all the necessary conditions to generate X-ray radiation when liquid moves in the channel is shown. The questions of the electrization, the charge accumulation, and its discharge are considered. It is shown that the charge intensely accumulates during liquid cavitation in small holes on the channel wall. The appearance of stable luminous cavitation threads moving in the flow is revealed in the initial segment of the channel, and their role in the discharge of the cavitation regions is determined.