Empirical methods for cavitation erosion prediction are very numerous and widely used in industry, together with long industrial experience on prototype machines, allow designers to choose the appropriate material for each industrial situation and to gain a global view on the influence of the main governing parameters on the cavitation erosion process. However, there are a few serious defects. The classification of materials in terms of their resistance to cavitation erosion is far from being universal as it depends on the erosion device and also on the liquid. Correlations between the erosion resistance of materials and their mechanical properties are often very scattered and valid only within a limited range of flow parameters. The scaling laws used for the transposition from model to prototype are not yet fully determined. From the designer’s viewpoint, the ideal situation would be to have at his disposal a fully predictive computational method which could dispense with model tests and be used at a preliminary design step. This is still far beyond present state of the art and erosion tests still have to be carried out. The scientific program is based on clarifying some of the questions presented previously.

Recent activity:

Measurements of erosion at 30000 fps.

Partners: University of Maribor, Slovenia
Duration: 2014 – 2017