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The purpose of this paper is to study the cavitation erosion stages of AA5083 by electrochemical noise (EN).

EN technology including noise resistance and fast Fourier transform were used to characterize the electrochemical process during the cavitation erosion process.

AA5083 suffers from uniform corrosion during the cavitation erosion process. The whole cavitation erosion process can be divided into three stages: incubation stage, acceleration stage and steady-state stage. EN signals showed obvious differences in different stages of cavitation erosion.

EN technique is a suitable method that can be used to study cavitation erosion mechanism and identify cavitation erosion stages.

Aiming at the cavitations and noise problem of hydraulic cone valve and based on the radial force analysis of the valve core, the radial deviation of the spool is considered to obtain the changing rules of cavitations and noise.

The solid model of the internal flow field of cone valve is established. The mesh models are divided using ICEM-CFD software. The numerical simulation of the liquid-gas two-phase flow is performed on the cavitation and noise of the flow field inside the cone valve based on FLUENT software. The visible experimental platform for cavitation and noise of hydraulic cone valve is built. According to the contrast of the experimental results, the correctness of the simulation results is verified.

The results show that the radial deviation causes the position of the cavitation accumulates in the valve cavity on the side of the upper cone. In addition, the strength of the cavitation changes slowly with the half cone angle of 45°, and the noise level is the smallest. Furthermore, appropriately increasing the opening degree within a reasonable range can effectively suppress cavitation and reduce the noise level.

The cavitation can be suppressed and the noise level can be reduced by means of changing the three factors, which lays the foundation for the design and theoretical research of the cone valve.

Hydroelectric power is widely used because it is environmental friendly, renewable and green. The cavitation is an inevitable phenomenon during the operation of hydro turbine, which is related to the efficiency and service life of the unit. This paper aims to discriminate the phenomenon of the incipient cavitation, prevent the early destruction and avoid the irreversible damage to hydro turbine.

The paper tries to find out the characteristics of cavitation entirely through a variety of features. The method comprises collection of the signals using a hydrophone, acceleration sensor and acoustic emission sensor; analyzing cavitation signal by using the way of wavelet time-frequency, peak factor and power spectral density; and comparing the different wavelet basis for analyzing signals and find the most suitable one.

The analyzed results show that the wavelet basis of morlet is more suitable for the cavitation signals. The hydrophone can distinguish the different operating conditions and discriminate the difference between the phenomenon of incipient cavitation and the other state of cavitation. The results show that when the hydrophone and acceleration sensors are used, the accuracy rate goes up to 75 per cent, which meets the requirements for the detection for incipient cavitation.

This paper focuses on finding the best sensor to discriminate the operating state of incipient cavitation to prevent early destruction.

The purpose of this paper is to study the variation of cavitation scale with pressure and flow in poppet throttle valve, to obtain the cavitation scale under pressure and flow conditions and to provide experimental support for the research of suppressing throttle valve cavitation and cavitation theory.

A hydraulic cavitation platform was set up, a valve was manufactured with highly transparent PMMA material and a high-speed camera was used to observe the change in cavitation scale.

Through experiments, it is found that the pressure difference between inlet and outlet of throttle valve affects the cavitation scale, and the more the pressure difference is, the easier the cavitation will be formed. Under the condition of small pressure difference, the cavitation is not obvious and reducing the pressure difference can effectively suppress the cavitation; the flow rate also affects the cavitation scale, the smaller the flow rate, the more difficult the cavitation will be formed and the lower the flow rate, the more the cavitation will be suppressed.

Because of the magnification factor of the high-speed camera lens, the morphology of smaller bubbles cannot be observed in this study, and the experimental conditions need to be improved in the follow-up study.

This study can provide experimental support for the study of throttle valve cavitation suppression methods and cavitation theory.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the cavitation characteristics of a water hydraulic axial piston motor (WHAPM) to improve the water motor performance, to reduce the vibration and noise and to prolong the service life of the motor.

The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software PumpLinx is chosen to do cavitation analysis of the WHAPM. In this case, first, cavitation mechanism of the water piston motor is analyzed in depth. Then, considering the effects of bubble dynamics, the rate of phase transition, turbulence effects and non-condensable gas, the full cavitation model is selected, the dynamic CFD numerical model of internal flow field on the water hydraulic piston motor is established based on PumpLinx software and the fluid cavitation inside is numerically studied. Finally, the influence of the valve plate and pistons on motor cavitation is analyzed.

Research results show that there are two serious cavitation regions: one is the pressure transition region of the valve plate that is near the top dead center, and the other is the low-pressure region of the piston that is near the low-pressure transition area. Moreover, the more serious cavitation area is on the valve plate region.

The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is able to detect the cavitation characteristics of the water piston motor. Besides, it is deduced that valve-plate structure optimization is more important than pistons to reduce cavitation influence.

This paper aims to resolve the cavitation problem encountered in cone throttle valves concerning fluid flow performance and pitting from cavitation luminescence, the author studied the flow field within a cone throttle valve set with various valve openings, inlet pressures and outlet back pressures.

The flow and cavitation distribution in the valve under different pressure conditions were obtained in simulations. To confirm these results experimentally, a hydraulic cavitation platform was constructed. The valve was made of polymethyl methacrylate material with high transparency to observe the cavitation directly, as well as cavitation luminescence. The flow characteristics of this valve were measured under various working conditions.

With increasing cavitation strength, a reduction in cavitation on the throttle capacity was more evident. Increasing the back pressure and reducing the working pressure of the valve appropriately improves the flow capacity of the valve, which subsequently improves the performance of the valve. The cavitation luminescence is also linearly related to cavitation intensity. That is, the stronger the flow capacity of the valve, the less likely the luminescence is produced. Moreover, a stronger luminescence intensity worsens the flow performance of the valve.

Owing to the limitation of experimental means and lack of research on bubble shape, the subsequent research will complement this aspect.

With a view to providing theoretical and experimental support, cavitation luminescence is also studied to gain a deeper understanding of the cavitation mechanism in hydraulic valves.

The innovation of this paper is to study the cavitation luminescence in the hydraulic system.

Cavitation damage in the form of spongy, pitted surfaces is widely associated with pump impellers, marine propellers and sliding bearings. It used to be rare as a form of damage on mechanical seals, but the number of cases has been increasing in the last few years. This is due, on the one hand, to conditions of application which are becoming increasingly demanding, and on the other hand to the growing use of ceramic materials. For although the latter make excellent face materials, they are far more sensitive to cavitation erosion than metallic face materials.

This paper aims to reveal the cavitation characteristics of three oil wedges sleeve bearing and set the theoretical and experimental basis for defining the oil film boundary condition.

Computational fluid dynamics model of three oil wedges sleeve bearings based on the Navier–Stokes equation is set using Fluent considering turbulent situation and two-phase flow theory. The cavitation characteristics of bearing is investigated by taking pictures of experiment.

The rupture region of oil film and the contours of air volume fraction increase distinctly with the increase of rotating speed and the decrease of input pressure. The critical rotating speed of cavitation occurrence and oil film pressure increases with the increase of input pressure. The change trend of experiment cavitation with the rotating speed and input pressure is consistent with theoretical cavitation in general.

The finite element model of three oil wedges sleeve bearings is established based on the Navier-Stokes calculation equation of the fluid, two-phase flow theory and turbulent model. Sleeve bearing is transparent, the pictures of cavitation can be easily taken by high-speed camera, the cavitation characteristics of bearing is studied by experiment. The cavitation performance of three oil wedges bearings is studied with the change of input pressure and rotating speed, the change trend is basically consistent for theory and experiment. The study on critical rotating speed of cavitation occurrence is benefit for defining the oil film boundary condition.

The vortex ropes in draft tube of Francis turbine always cause fluctuation and vibration, which consequently threaten the safety and stability of hydro turbines. The purpose of this paper is to use a cavitation flow computational method to simulate spiral vortex ropes under part load conditions and columnar vortex ropes under high-load conditions in draft tube. The unsteady cavitating flow characteristics in draft tube and its interaction with runner cavitation were analyzed.

The calculation method was verified by cavitation simulation around a 3D hydrofoil. The results show that the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) turbulence model with the Zwart-Gerber-Blemari cavitation model have comparative advantage in cavitation simulations whether from capture of cavity shape or prediction of pressure changes. So it was chosen to simulate the two-phase cavitation flow in Francis turbine. The boundary conditions for inlet and outlet were set to inlet total pressure and outlet static pressure. The finite volume method with the central difference was adopted to discretize the equations.

The calculated Thoma number agreed well with the experimental data. The vortex rope diameter and length increased with the cavitation development for both of the two types of vortex ropes conditions. The maximum peak-to-peak values of pressure pulsations located in the draft tube elbow part under all of the Thoma numbers conditions. Under spiral vortex rope conditions, the pressure pulsation in the same section of draft tube cone show obviously phase shift. The vortex rope affects the development of runner cavitation, which induces the symmetric and axisymmetric cavitation region in the suction side of blades for spiral and columnar vortex rope condition, respectively.

The mesh independence had been checked only in non-cavitation flow; in addition, the mesh density did not well satisfy the requirements of LES due to the limitations of computing power. The higher mesh density on a simplified model with one blade flow path and the entire draft tube may be helpful for obtaining more precise results.

The spiral and columnar vortex ropes in a Francis turbine were compared and analyzed. The annular hydraulic jump appeared in the columnar vortex rope conditions has little effects on the pressure pulsations. The uneven flow field caused by spiral vortex led to the asymmetric cavitation development.

This paper aims to study the influence of microparticles on the surface cavitation behavior of 2Cr3WMoV steel; microparticle suspensions of different concentration, particle size, material and shape were prepared based on ultrasonic vibration cavitation experimental device.

2Cr3WMoV steel was taken as the research object for ultrasonic cavitation experiment. The morphology, quantity and distribution of cavitation pits were observed and analyzed by metallographic microscope and scanning electron microscope.

The study findings showed that the surface cavitation process produced pinhole cavitation pits on the surface of 2Cr3WMoV steel. High temperature in the process led to oxidation and carbon precipitation on the material surface, resulting in the “rainbow ring” cavitation morphology. Both the concentration and size of microparticles affected the number of pits on the material surface. When the concentration of microparticles was 1 g/L, the number of pits reached the maximum, and when the size of microparticles was 20 µm, the number of pits reached the minimum. The microparticles of Fe3O4, Al2O3, SiC and SiO2 all increased the number of pits on the surface of 2Cr3WMoV steel. In addition, the distribution of pits of spherical microparticles was more concentrated than that of irregularly shaped microparticles in turbidity.

Most of the current studies have not systematically focused on the effect of each factor of microparticles on the cavitation behavior when they act separately, and the results of the studies are more scattered and varied. At the same time, it has not been found to carry out the study of microparticle cavitation with 2Cr3WMoV steel as the research material, and there is a lack of relevant cavitation morphology and experimental data.